Handoff prioritization schemes using early blocking
Jörg Diederich, Martina Zitterbart · IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials · 2005
Upcoming cellular networks are based on the Internet Protocol (IP) to provide efficient support for applications with bursty traffic characteristics, for example, WWW browsers. Such IP-based networks must include Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to enable the use of real-time applications such as mobile telephony. A major problem with regard to QoS is that such real-time applications have to be interrupted after a handoff if the new cell cannot provide sufficient resources. A large number of different schemes have been proposed to deal with this problem. Basically, they give priorities to sessions performing a handoff into a cell compared to newly arriving sessions in that cell. In this manner, such handoff prioritization schemes can avoid or reduce communication interruptions after a handoff. This article introduces the basic functions of handoff prioritization schemes and describes one proposal for a classification of these schemes. Based on this classification, it finally presents a survey of available schemes.