Towards autonomic handover decision management in 4G networks

Abstract

Mobility management has become an important issue in 4G networks due to the integration of multiple network access technologies. Traditionally, only the received signal strength has been considered for the vertical handover. However, more considerations will be necessary to satisfy the end user's preferences. In this paper, we propose an Autonomic Handover Manager (AHM) based on the autonomic computing concept to decide the best network interface to handover in 4G networks. AHM decides the appropriate policy for the specific service or application without the user's intervention using the context information from the mobile terminal, the network and the user. We present the context information and the context evaluation function to decide handover based on the user preferences. We then describe the scenario to validate its feasibility using multimedia conferencing service on the mobile terminal.