An Overview of Context-Aware Vertical Handover Schemes in Heterogeneous Networks

TL;DR

This paper reviews context-aware vertical handover schemes in heterogeneous networks, highlighting their role in ensuring seamless service continuity and QoS during user mobility across different wireless technologies.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of existing context-aware handover methods, categorizing them into general, IMS-based, and WLAN/WiMAX solutions, and analyzing their architectures and effectiveness.

Findings

Context awareness is crucial for seamless handover.

Different schemes vary in architecture and QoS support.

Most solutions aim to improve service continuity during mobility.

Abstract

As wireless access technologies grow rapidly, the recent studies have focused on granting mobile users the ability of roaming across different wireless networks in a seamless manner thus offering seamless mobility. The different characteristics of each wireless technology with regards to QoS brought many challenges for provisioning the continuous services (audio/video streaming) in a seamless way. In this paper, we intend to review the existing context-aware methods which offered solutions for service continuity. We looked at the types of context information used in each solution. Through this study, it is clear that context awareness plays a significant role in handover process in order to satisfy users demanding seamless services. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to compare the existing methods grouped as general, IMS based, and WLAN/WiMAX solutions in terms of several criteria, such as interworking architecture, service continuity, and QoS provisioning.