FaTS – Fast Transparent Synchronous Handover in IEEE 802.16

Abstract:
Mobility support is a key feature of wireless networks, which are taken into account in the latest amendment of the IEEE 802.16 standard. As one basic function of mobility management the handover is of major importance. In this paper the challenging task of handover support in IEEE 802.16 will be discussed. To efficiently support the handover a new approach is proposed that inverts the traditional mechanism of information provisioning for handover decisions and avoids any time-consuming scanning procedures. The new handover mechanism is based on broadcast transmission of the mobile subscriber station to the neighboring base stations and exploits the features of orthogonal frequency division multiple access used in IEEE 802.16. Specifically for multi-hop communication, which tend to be a typical deployment in systems beyond 3G to overcome unfavorable link conditions in particular for higher frequencies, this novel approach is perfectly suited.