Truly Seamless Vertical Handovers

The communication over the wireless access networks, due to the inherent cellular structure requires handovers between the same of different access technologies. However short, due to the requirement that the data traffic is indirected from the source location in the network to the target location, these handover introduce an interruption in the communication between the mobile device and its correspondent nodes. In order to be able to offer a similar experience to the users, the research community studied different approaches for the seamless handovers.

OpenEPC provides the means to transparently handover the active sessions of a mobile device between the different access networks including LTE, other 3GPP and non-3GPP accesses. The effect of vertical handovers can be showcased separately or together with the Always Best Connected scenario using the OpenEPC applications: real-time applications including video streaming as an IMS service, as a plain SIP service and as Internet service (through the web browser).

Following the internal R&D of Fraunhofer FOKUS, OpenEPC includes a zero packet loss vertical handover solution which does not require external functionality such as buffering. This is done through an extension of the functionality for mobility management in the PDN GW. It executes the handover of the downlink connectivity only when the connection over the target access network is completely established (real make-before-break handovers). The mechanism included in OpenEPC was developed in the spirit of the 3GPP standardization and targets future introduction into the 3GPP EPC.

back     top