Ken Murray, Dirk Pesch

Intelligent Network Access and Inter-System Handover Control in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks for Smart Space Environments

The next generation of mobile networks will support not just simple mobile connectivity but access to evolving smart space environments. It is expected that these systems utilise multiple radio access technologies, seamlessly integrated to form a heterogeneous wireless access network, thus enabling total ubitiqous computing. On the arrival of a service request from a smart space user or device, the network operator must assign one of the available access networks. Selecting the network that has the highest probability of providing the best Quality of Service (QoS) for a particular service type is an important consideration for overall network stability and QoS provisioning. In this paper we present aspects of intelligent radio resource management based on policy based call admission control to select the best available network and fuzzy logic based intersystem handover control. The admission controller admits a new user based on the current load and service mix in each available network.

Inter-system handover involves users changing connectivity from one access technology to another. Inter-system handover initiation can be due to reduced QoS, cost of connection, network availability or user context such as characteristics of user mobility. This paper presents a fuzzy logic based time decision algorithm for inter-system handover initiation. The algorithm selects the time at which to initiate an inter-system handover request and in doing so reduces the number of excessive inter-system handovers.