A cell-numbering plan for seamless handoff in a wireless ATM network

Abstract

This paper proposes a cell-numbering plan for mobile stations to handoff seamlessly to the cells in a wireless Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) network. It also proposes a minimum-hop rerouting (MHR) method to perform the rerouting of user connections during the handoff. The cell-numbering plan assigns each cell an integer from 1 to 5, ensuring that neighboring cells will have different numbers. Any mobile station that performs a handoff beween any two cells can easily calculate if a reroute is needed. Furthermore, by using the MHR, the path between the originating and terminating mobile stations will be the shortest whenever either of them moves. The signaling bandwidth used for this kind of rerouting is believed to be the smallest among the methods reported to date. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.