Stochastic control of path optimization for inter-switch handoffs in wireless ATM networks
One of the major design issues in wireless ATM networks is the support of inter-switch handoffs, An inter-switch handoff occurs when a mobile terminal moves to a new base station connecting to a different switch. Apart from resource allocation at the new base station, inter-switch handoff also requires connection rerouting. With the aim of minimizing the handoff delay while using the network resources efficiently, the two-phase handoff protocol uses path extension for each inter-switch handoff, followed by path optimization if necessary. The objective of this paper is to determine when and how often path optimization should be performed, The problem is formulated as a semi-Markov decision process, Link cost and signaling cost functions are introduced to capture the tradeoff between the network resources utilized by a connection and the signaling and processing load incurred on the network, The time between inter-switch handoffs follows a general distribution, A stationary optimal policy is obtained when the call termination time is exponentially distributed. Numerical results show significant improvement over four other heuristics.
path optimization inter-switch handoff wireless atm connection rerouting