A Decision Scheme for Vertical Handoff in Overlay Wireless Networks

Next generation wireless networks (NGWN) offers for users the ability to be served while moving from a network to another or between subnetworks. Handoff is a main challenge for NGWN, this challenge lies in the decision to which network to connect in order to keep the mobile terminal always best connected. Mobile terminal may face while moving, different types of networks with a large number of characteristics that need to be considered for choosing between these networks. In this paper we propose a novel vertical handoff decision scheme using the simple additive weighting (SAW) ranking method in a distributed manner. We then present the simulation results and analysis, which show good performance of the proposed scheme.