Intelligent Seamless Handover in Next Generation Networks

Al-Khalidi, Mohammed; Al-Zaidi, Rabab; Thomos, Nikolaos; J. Reed, Martin

Abstract

Providing high quality of service (QoS) to mobile
end-users, and guaranteeing resilient connectivity for healthcare
wearables and other mobile devices is a critical component of
Industry 5.0. However, one of the biggest difficulties that network
operators encounter is the issue of mobility handover, as it can be
detrimental to end-users’ safety and experience. Although various
handover mechanisms have been developed to meet high QoS,
achieving optimum handover performance while maintaining
sustainable network operation is still an unreached goal. In this
paper, random linear codes (RLC) are used to achieve seamless
handover, where handover traffic is encoded using RLC and
then multicasted to handover destination(s) using a mobility
prediction algorithm for destination selection. To overcome the
limitations of current IP core networks, we make use of a revolutionary IP-over-Information-Centric Network architecture at the
network core that supports highly flexible multicast switching.
The combination of the RLC, flexible multicast, and mobility
prediction, makes the communication resilient to packet loss
and helps to avoid handover failures of existing solutions while
reducing overall packet delivery cost, hence offering sustainable
mobility support. The performance of the proposed scheme is
evaluated using a realistic vehicular mobility dataset and cellular
network infrastructure and compared with Fast Handover for
Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PFMIPv6). The results show that our scheme
efficiently supports seamless session continuity in high mobility
environments, reducing the total traffic delivery cost by 44%
compared to its counterpart PFMIPv6, while reducing handover
delay by 26% and handover failure to less than 2% of total
handovers.

Citation

Al-Khalidi, M., Al-Zaidi, R., Thomos, N., & J. Reed, M. (2023). Intelligent Seamless Handover in Next Generation Networks. IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, 70(1), 1566 - 1579. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2023.3340416

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Dec 7, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Jul 25, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 6, 2024
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics
• Print ISSN: 0098-3063
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1566 - 1579
• Series ISSN: 1558-4127
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCE.2023.3340416
• Keywords: Sustainable mobility, handover, industry 5.0, next generation networks, PFMIPv6, IP-over-ICN, random linear codes, prediction, Markov chain.