SyncScan: practical fast handoff for 802.11 infrastructure networks

Abstract— Wireless access networks scale by replicating base stations geographically and then allowing mobile clients to seamlessly “hand off” from one station to the next as they traverse the network. However, providing the illusion of continuous connectivity requires selecting the right moment to handoff and the right base station to transfer to. Unfortunately, 802.11-based networks only attempt a handoff when a client’s service degrades to a point where connectivity is threatened. Worse, the overhead of scanning for nearby base stations is routinely over 250ms – during which incoming packets are dropped – far longer than what can be tolerated by highly interactive applications such as voice telephony. In this paper we describe SyncScan, a low-cost technique for continuously tracking nearby base stations by synchronizing short listening periods at the client with periodic transmissions from each base station. We have implemented this SyncScan algorithm using commodity 802...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Ishwar Ramani, Stefan Savage
• Keywords: Base Station, Communications, INFOCOM 2005, Nearby Base Stations, Right Base Station