Abstract: The over increasing demand for deployment of wireless access
networks has made wireless mobile devices to face so many challenges in
choosing the best suitable network from a set of available access networks. Some
of the weighty issues in 4G wireless networks are fastness and seamlessness in
handover process. This paper therefore, proposes a handover technique based on
movement prediction in wireless mobile (WiMAX and LTE-A) environment.
The technique enables the system to predict signal quality between the UE and
Radio Base Stations (RBS)/Access Points (APs) in two different networks.
Prediction is achieved by employing the Markov Decision Process Model
(MDPM) where the movement of the UE is dynamically estimated and averaged
to keep track of the signal strength of mobile users. With the help of the
prediction, layer-3 handover activities are able to occur prior to layer-2
handover, and therefore, total handover latency can be reduced. The
performances of various handover approaches influenced by different metrics
(mobility velocities) were evaluated. The results presented demonstrate good accuracy the proposed method was able to achieve in predicting the next signal level by reducing the total handover latency.