Handoff decision algorithms for rapidly deployable mobile infrastructure communication networks

Abstract

Mobile communication systems should use limited resources in an efficient and convenient manner. One way of achieving this is to use smaller cells in the expense of corresponding handoff and administration overhead.Several algorithms are proposed to decide whether a handoff is necessary for a mobile or not. These algorithms differ according to the metrics used, where the metrics are monitored, and how these metrics are used.Some applications like military tactical communication and disaster area communication infrastructure deployment require rapid deployment of the mobile infrastructure. To satisfy rapid deployment and survivability requirement, architectures with mobile cell-managing units are employed.For the systems having a mobile infrastructure, handoff requires special treatment. We propose a handoff decision algorithm based on fuzzy inference systems. We use simulation to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The evaluated performance of the algorithm shows that our algorithm performs the best among the conventional received signal strength based handoff decision algorithms. With slight modifications, our proposed handoff decision algorithm is applicable to the systems having immobile infrastructure.