Vertical handoff decision in 4G wireless networks using multi attribute decision making approach

Multi-interface terminal in heterogeneous wireless networks will have network access from diverse access technologies. Multiple attribute for decision making including user preference will increase the complexity of handoff process. Various approaches have been proposed to solve the complexity problem of handoff decision. In this paper, multi attribute decision making algorithms Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, Simple Additive Weighting (SAW), Total Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) methods have been proposed for handoff decision in a WiMAX-WLAN environment to facilitate user with better quality of service. AHP has been used for calculation of weights of decision parameters. Numerical results show that SAW, TOPSIS and GRA provide almost similar performance. SAW is very simple to implement but probability of error is less in GRA because values of decision attribute are directly used for ranking of alternatives. TOPSIS is sensitive to the attribute with high score.