Performance Evaluation of Handover in WiMax with TCP and UDP as Underlying Protocol

Abstract

The rejection of an ongoing connection/session is serious problem and it degrades the QoS and efficiency of the network rather than rejecting a request for new connection. The impact on performance of handovers is a serious problem in cellular systems that must be addressed. During handover there may be delay in packets and connections may drop. Real time applications i.e., VoIP and streaming video can be adversely affected by such kind of delays. In this study we used TCP and UDP as an underlying protocol for exchange of data between two wireless mobile nodes in a WiMax access network and had evaluated the effect on performance in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput. The results showed that when handover is triggered the transfer window resets to zero causing higher throughput and end-to-end delay for TCP than UDP based on packet size and traffic load.