A Comprehensive Step-Wise Survey of Multiple Attribute Decision-Making Mobility Approaches

In the context of next-generation mobile networks, mobility control mechanisms are anticipated to provide infrastructures that can adapt to a broad range of requirements enforced by heterogeneous devices and applications. A mechanism that is central to this adaptability is the handover. During this critical phase of mobility lifecycle management, an appropriate technique for selecting the most suitable Point of Attachment (PoA) must be employed to ensure that mobile devices maintain optimal connectivity. Among the various strategies used to tackle the handover decision problem, the Multiple Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) method is one of the most cost-effective, given the benefits provided by its decision-making approach. Despite its popularity, mobility management mechanisms often employ MADM methods without conducting a thorough performance analysis to justify the approach. One of the main reasons for such referenceless handover technique adoptions is the lack of studies that could inform researchers, developers, mobility managers, and operators about the primary differences among available MADM methods. To fill this knowledge gap, in this paper, we conduct a comprehensive review of the literature on MADM methods in the domain of handover decisions. In particular, our contribution includes providing a detailed summary of the step-wise mathematical implementation in addition to a broad discussion of the main MADM methods in the quality-oriented mobility decision domain, thoroughly classifying their characteristics, and analyzing strengths and limitations. We also compare different categories of MADM methods and discuss some open issues and research challenges in this area.