GroupScan: Group-Based Fast Handoff Scheme for Wireless LAN

Jangkyu YUN  Mahnsuk YOON  Byunghwa LEE  Kijun HAN  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E94-B   No.10   pp.2929-2932
Publication Date: 2011/10/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E94.B.2929
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: LETTER
Category: Terrestrial Wireless Communication/Broadcasting Technologies
Keyword: 
fast handoff,  link layer,  pre-scanning,  IEEE 802.11,  wireless LANs,  

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Summary: 
Handoff is a critical issue for stations in IEEE 802.11-based wireless networks. In order to provide Voice-over IP (VoIP) and real-time streaming applications to stations, a handoff mechanism is needed that can reduce latency and provide seamless communication. However, the IEEE802.11 handoff scheme is not appropriate to supply their quality of service (QoS), because it is based on a full-scanning approach. Full-scanning spends too much time searching for access points (APs). Therefore, various pre-scan handoff protocols such as SyncScan and DeuceScan have been proposed. They scan to find nearby APs before the station loses contact with its current AP, but the pre-scanning overhead is considerable. Our handoff mechanism reduces the delay and overhead associated with the link layer handoff by periodically scanning the channel groups.