Improved Association and Disassociation Scheme for Enhanced WLAN Handover and VHO

The number of mobile devices and wireless connections is significantly increasing. Among many wireless protocol types, wireless local area networks (WLANs) are expected to support a significant number of devices. Due to this reason, effective and efficient handover (HO) and vertical handover (VHO) support for WLAN mobile devices is important. A significant improvement in quality of service (QoS) can be obtained by reducing the association and disassociation interruption time for user equipment (UE) servicing real-time applications during WLAN HO and VHO operations. Based on this focus, this paper investigates the problem of using only the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) in HO and VHO decisions, which is what the current IEEE 802.11 based WLAN systems use. Experimental results presented in this paper demonstrate that only using the RSSI results in significant interruption time during HO to another WLAN access point (AP) or to a cellular base station during VHO. Therefore, in this paper, an improved association and disassociation scheme that can reduce the data interruption time (DIT) and improve the throughput performance is proposed.