Patent ID: 8243689

Claim:
A handover method for providing mobile Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service over wireless communication networks, the handover method comprising: checking whether a strength of a signal received from a first base station of a serving first wireless network falls within a predetermined first threshold range in which handover is predicted to occur; if the strength of the signal received from the first base station falls within the range in which handover is predicted to occur, checking whether a strength of a signal received from at least one base station of a second wireless network is higher than a second threshold value required for handover; estimating velocity and direction of a Mobile Node (MN) using location information received from a satellite; predicting a handover target base station using the estimated velocity and estimated location information; and if the predicted target base station is one of base stations having the second threshold value, performing handover to the target base station, wherein the estimation of velocity and direction is performed by predicting velocity and direction using a predetermined number of pieces of information selected from among location information currently from a satellite and recent location information previously received from the satellite, and wherein the prediction of the velocity and direction is performed using the following Equations: V t = α ⁢ ∑ i = 0 k ⁢ ( 1 - α ) i ⁢ V t - 1 D t = β ⁢ ⁢ d t + ( 1 - β ) ⁢ D t - 1 = β ⁢ ∑ j = 0 k ⁢ ( 1 - β ) j ⁢ d t - j where k is a constant indicative of the number of velocity data values obtained at previous times on the basis of current time t, α is a smoothing constant having a value between 0 and 1 and can be determined through a large number of simulations, D is a predicted direction of the MN at next time t, d t is a moving direction of the MN at current time t, and β is a smoothing constant having a value between 0 and 1 and can be determined through a large number of simulations.