An enhanced TCP for upward vertical handoff in integrated WLAN and cellular networks

The integration of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and third generation (3G) cellular networks has been recently a subject of great interest, mainly aimed at augmenting cellular networks with high-rate data services by WLANs in hotspots. The complementary characteristics of 3G cellular networks and 802.11 WLANs are expected to offer the best of both technologies. On the other hand, the drastically different characteristics of both networks could be a serious obstacle to providing seamless mobility in the integrated WLAN and cellular networks. In particular, mobile users suffer front a drastic decrease in data rate after a vertical handoff from a WLAN to a 3G cellular network. However, current TCP congestion control cannot adapt to the change in the data rate after the vertical handoff, resulting in significant throughput degradation. Thus, we propose a novel TCP scheme to enhance the throughput when a vertical handoff occurs from a WLAN to a cellular network. For the proposed scheme, the throughput performance is investigated via analytic modeling and simulation. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.