Reducing Wi-Fi handover delay using a new positioning process

Abstract

Mobility has now a crucial requirement for wireless communication. Handover is one of the major tasks that are used to support continuous transmission for a mobile terminal into different radio coverage area. Optimizing the existing handover protocol requires integrating new functionalities. This work focuses on presenting and optimizing handover algorithm. We analyze handover time in wireless local area networks based on the IEEE 802.11b MAC protocol. In fact, scan phase is the main contributor to the handover time. Then, we propose a handover model which replaces a scan phase by a positioning process. This model is able to select the suitable access point (AP) based on the shortest distance far from the mobile terminal (MT). Proposed Handover allows a mobile user to reacting quickly to decide about to which access point to connect. Simulation results show that the proposed model provides gains in term of delays and Handover success in various scenarios