Wsv. Wong et al., Performance evaluation of path optimization schemes for inter-switch handoff in wireless ATM networks, WIREL NETW, 6(4), 2000, pp. 251-262
One of the major design issues in wireless ATM is the support of inter-swit
ch handoff. An inter-switch handoff occurs when a mobile terminal moves to
a new base station connecting to a different switch. Recently, a two-phase
handoff protocol has been proposed to support inter-switch handoff in wirel
ess ATM networks. With the aim of shortening handoff delay while using the
network resources efficiently, the two-phase handoff protocol employs path
extension for each inter-switch handoff, followed by path optimization if n
ecessary. To implement the two-phase handoff protocol efficiently, we need
to determine when to trigger path optimization. In this paper, we propose a
nd analyze three path optimization schemes, namely: periodic, exponential,
and Bernoulli, for the two-phase handoff protocol. The design objective is
to determine the time to invoke path optimization such that the average cos
t per connection is minimized. We develop a discrete time analytical model
and a discrete-event simulation model for comparing the performance of the
three path optimization schemes. Results indicate that the Bernoulli path o
ptimization scheme outperforms the other two schemes by providing a lower a
verage cost per connection. The proposed models can also be adapted to anal
yze other path optimization schemes in general.