Survey of handoff techniques in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

Abstract EN

IEEE 802.11 based wireless networks (WLAN) have been witnessing a rapid growth and wide deployment in the last decade.

Mobility support in such networks is an essential issue.

Hence, assurance of seamless handoff is one of the major problems in mobile networks, especially, for real-time streaming applications like Voice-over IP (VoIP).

Handoff or handover is a mechanism that aims to enable a mobile user (MS -Mobile Station) to smoothly move between APs’ (Access Pints) covering areas.

Many handoff techniques have been proposed in the literature.

A survey with a brief description of most important handoff proposals is presented in this paper.

In addition, these techniques are theoretically evaluated and compared.