Performance Analysis of Network Selection Technique for Handover Strategies in Heterogeneous 5G Network

In order to select the best network in the heterogeneous network for taking better handover decisions, subjective and objective methods are proposed to calculate the weight of the criteria of each alternative network. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method is a subjective method that applies to a pairwise matrix to allocate the weightage of each attribute of the network. The criteria Importance through inter-criteria correlation (CRITIC) and Entropy method is an objective method that directly works on the decision matrix which defines the various network. In this work, we use a hybrid of both subjective and objective methods to calculate the weight of each attribute of the network. After calculating the weight of each attribute, we have applied the technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) ranking technique to compute the rank of each network and select the best network among them on the preference score. The hybrid method to select the optimal network in a heterogeneous network reduces handover times, and the frequency of unnecessary handovers due to the ping pong effect, and satisfies the Quality of services as per our requirement. We have analyzed weight computed by the AHP, CRITIC, and Entropy, and a combination of these techniques. We also have shown the effects of these weights on the ranking order of available access networks for various traffic.