An enhanced multipolicy approach to vertical handoff decision across WLAN and UMTS networks

Next generation wireless networks will be generally identified based on their ability to successfully execute seamless Vertical Handoff (VHO). This prominent function gives an indication as to why VHO has become an important area of recent research works. Several works have succeeded in classifying VHO implementation into three distinct stages namely the policy repository stage, policy decision stage and policy enforcement stage. Most works in the decision phase have not clearly demonstrated how their algorithms will affect a users' experience on the internet. Our work contributes at the ldquopolicy decision stagerdquo by seeking out a new way of combining certain already existing decision metrics with a newly conceived decision making parameter called the ldquoApplication Remaining Timerdquo metric in an entirely new way to enhance VHO decision making. We clearly show how our approach will greatly enhance a users' File Transfer Protocol (FTP) experience on the internet in the popular downloading mode. Our implementation will also find strong application with other internet tasks whose remaining completion time can be easily estimated.