Dominant handover algorithms for vehicular Radio-over-Fiber networks at 60 GHz: A performance evaluation study

In mobile picocellular network topologies a critical issue is the handover procedure in conjunction with the provided quality of service, due to the limited overlapping areas between adjacent cells. In vehicular picocellular networks handovers are more frequent and render quality of service metrics - such as packet loss rate, delay and jitter - even more critical, since the afore-mentioned limitation is combined with the high velocities of mobile end-users. The paper focuses on presenting the dominant handover algorithms in vehicular Radio over-Fiber (RoF) networks at 60 GHz, i.e., the Traditional Handover Algorithm (THO), the Virtual Cellular Zone (VCZ), the Moving Extended Cell (MEC) and the Moving Extended N-Cells (MENC), respectively. Furthermore, we present a performance evaluation study on the provided quality of service for all the afore-mentioned handover algorithms. Specifically, for all four handover algorithms the corresponding theoretical mathematical models regarding packet losses are analyzed. Moreover, a simulation study is realized, in order to verify the theoretical results and to present algorithms' effect on additional quality of service indicators, i.e., delay and jitter. The presented results of our performance evaluation study could be a valuable tool to network operators that plan to provide bandwidth voracious services by deploying vehicular RoF network at 60 GHz. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.