Architecture of an Intelligent Inter-system Handover Management Scheme

In the next generation of wireless networks, mobile users should move across various access technologies, using multi-interface terminals and different types of services. The most important issue in such heterogeneous environment is the always best connected (ABC) concept. It allows the best connectivity to services anywhere at anytime. For that, a seamless inter-system handover solution is needed. In our paper, we propose an intelligent solution, based on the context-awareness concept, ensuring service continuity and answering user requirements. We focus on the vertical handover decision issue. It performs whether and over which access network to hand over among those available. It uses advanced decision algorithms (for more efficiency and intelligence) and it is governed by handover policies as decision rules (for more flexibility and optimization).