Handover triggering in IEEE 802.11 networks

Abstract

The current and future IEEE 802.11 deployment could potentially offer wireless Internet connectivity to mobile users. The limited AP radio coverage forces mobile devices to perform frequent handovers while current operating systems lack efficient mechanisms to manage AP transition. Thus we propose an anticipation-based handover solution that uses a Kalman filter to predict the short term evolution of the received power. This mechanism allows a mobile device to proactively start scanning and executing a handover as soon as better APs are available. We implement our mechanism in Android and we show that our solution provides a better wireless connection.