Confidentiality-Aware Decision on Handoffs under Uncertainty on Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

The handoff process in heterogeneous wireless networks (HetNets) focuses on the maintenance of mobile users connectivity, seeking to keep them continuously connected to the best available network. By supporting a better user connectivity on HetNets, handoff decision methods should take into account in the choice procedure both QoS and security issues jointly with performance. Unfortunately, such methods have slightly addressed security by ignoring its properties, and such fragility can lead to risky set up for user's data confidentiality transmission. Particularly, handoff decision methods ignore the existing uncertainty in HetNets. But, uncertain information is common when handling wireless networks transition. Therefore, this work presents a method to support confidentiality-aware decision making in the mobile device handoff process by adapting the expected-utility theory. Simulation results show how this method brings advantages to the user connectivity providing both less risky choices and low handoff cost.