Vertical handover management with quality of service support

For mobile usage of the Internet, new preferences might be desired when considering connectivity and handover between overlapped heterogeneous wireless networks. This work presents a cross-layer vertical handover framework, which includes modules for: multi-criteria decisions that support QoS, soft switching between the multiple interfaces of a mobile device, and a light weight signaling scheme for address resolution. The handover decisions are based on user's configuration, network attributes, and node's context information. A connection is transferred onto a new interface only when it is associated to the newly selected network and ready to take over the traffic. The identity of the mobile node is maintained by leveraging the well-known and widely employed NAT for the purpose of mobility management in a new version that we call Dynamic index NAT. DiNAT supports local and global mobility through hierarchical deployment of anchor points. The network simulator OMNeT++ is used to model the system and test its feasibility.