ACO-ESSVHOA - Ant Colony Optimization based Multi-Criteria Decision Making for Efficient Signal Selection in Mobile Vertical Handoff

Abstract: The process of Vertical handoff has become one of the major components of today's wireless environment due to the availability of the vast variety of signals. The decision for a handoff should be performed catering to the needs of the current transmission that is being carried out. Our paper describes a modified Ant Colony Optimization based handoff mechanism, that considers multiple criteria in its decision making process rather than a single parameter (pheromone intensity). In general, ACO considers the pheromone intensity and the evaporation rates as the parameters for selecting a route. In this paper, we describe a mechanism that determines the evaporation rates of each path connected to the source using various criteria, which in turn reflects on the pheromone levels present in the path and hence the probability of selecting that route. Experiments show that our process exhibits better convergence rates, hence better usability.