# Vertical Handover Algorithm for WBANs in Ubiquitous Healthcare with Quality of Service Guarantees
###### Abstract  
Recently, Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) have become an emerging technology in healthcare, where patients are equipped withwearable and implantable body sensor nodes to gather sensory information for remote monitoring. The increasing development of coordinator devices on patients enables the internetworking of WBANs in heterogeneous wireless networks to deliver physiological information that is collected at remote terminals in a timely fashion. However, in this type of network, providing a seamless handover with a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS), especially emergency services, is a challenging task. In this paper, we proposed an effective Multi-Attribute Decision-Making (MADM) handover algorithm that guarantees seamless connectivity. A patient's mobile devices automatically connect to the best network that fulfills the QoS requirements of different types of applications. Additionally, we integrated a Content-Centric Networking (CCN) processing module into different wireless networks to reduce packet loss, enhance QoS and avoid unnecessary handovers by leveraging in-network caching to achieve efficient content dissemination for ubiquitous healthcare. Simulation results proved that our proposed approach forthe model with CCN outperforms the model without CCN and Received Signal Strength Vertical Handoff (RSS-VHD) in terms of the number of handovers, enhancing QoS, packet loss, and energy efficiency. wireless body area network; multi-attribute decision-making; content-centric networking +
Footnote †: journal: Information Information  
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technology provides benefits by reducing unnecessary hospitalizations, reducing the number of doctors required and decreasing the time required for fast analysis and diagnosis. WBANs improve the level of patient care and allow for timely intervention from physicians and emergency medical technician staff through data monitoring and storage. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of remote healthcare applications can be significantly impacted by the existing wireless network, the power of mobile equipment and user requirements on the quality of experience (QoE) in terms of user mobility, required quality of service (QoS) of healthcare and personalized interaction. To minimize these influences and improve the transmission efficiency of heterogeneous networks, many wireless access technologies are proposed to integrate with WBANs [3; 4; 5]. In these networks, multi-interface terminals play an important role in ensuring seamless connectivity with high performance. Multi-interface terminals (namely, coordinator devices) known as PDAs, laptops and Smartphone are supported and have different interfaces to interact with wireless technologies. Each access technology has specific characteristics that complement each other. For example, a WiFi network provides high received signal strength and a high data rate at a low cost. Moreover, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) can supply full mobility and a low data rate. At the same time, Long Term Evolution (LTE) provides a low latency, high throughput, and high speed at a high cost [6]. Furthermore, each WBAN application will have different data packet requirements that are generated by the coordinator devices, such as the data generation rate, delay, and packet loss. These data can change in the QoS requirement over time. For these reasons, there is a need to select the best connection for each application in order to satisfy QoS requirements. Hence, a network selection algorithm can play an important role in choosing the best network to meet the application requirements and guarantee seamless connectivity. To achieve the above aim, this paper effectively implemented both a handover algorithm and heterogeneous network architecture. The main contributions of the paper are summarized as follows:  
* We propose the effectiveness of a Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) handover algorithm that is based on the types of applications and patient conditions to perform a handover when necessary.