Towards Reducing Handoff Times in Next Generation Wireless Networks

Abstract

In high density Wi-Fi networks, due to a large number of access points (APs), the handoff mechanism is critical for maintaining service continuity. Wireless devices initiate the handoff process, which takes a few seconds. When working with delay-sensitive applications, this could lead to data loss. We propose an efficient, detection and discovery technique (DDT) based on software defined networking (SDN) to reduce the handoff times. The AP traffic and signal strength values are reported to the SDN controller through received signal strength indicator (RSSI) manager and simple network management protocol (SNMP) manager. Decisions, such as, when to initiate the handoff (detection time) and which AP to connect to (discovery time) are taken by the SDN controller. Extensive simulation runs are carried on the Mininet-NS3-Wi-Fi network simulator for the performance evaluation of DDT. The proposed scheme reduces the handoff times by 60—70% when compared to the traditional Wi-Fi network scheme.