Handoff analysis in wireless multimedia networks

Multimedia wireless networks are being considered as a natural evolution of the present radio networks. In most of the cases, these networks will be connected to an ATM high speed backbone network, and the evaluation of the network performance under users mobility activity demands for new analyses. In this environment, it is particularly important to know the number of handoffs or handovers during a call to make an appropriate dimensioning of virtual circuits for a wireless cell. In this paper we study the handover distributions and their statistical moments for a variety of cell residence times and call holding times distributions. The pmf of the number of handoffs is then used to evaluate the probability of a call completion as a function of the call forced terminated probability due to unavailability of channels in the handoff event.