Fuzzy Logic-Based Handover Requirement Analysis and Access Network Selection for Device-to-Device Communication

Abstract

In order to address the exponential growth of data traffic, the concept of device-to-device (D2D) communication has been introduced in fifth generation (5G). The seamless handover to the finest available access network is very essential in furnishing high quality of experience (QoE) to the devices involved in D2D communication. An intelligent, fast and reliable vertical handover (VHO) decision scheme is required for D2D to achieve seamless mobility and uninterrupted service. To address these issues, a two-stage fuzzy logic-based VHO scheme is proposed in this work. Here, fuzzy logic-based handover requirement analysis (HRA) is carried out in stage 1 based on received signal strength (RSS), data rate (DR) and latency (LA). This stage minimizes the unnecessary handovers. In stage 2, fuzzy-analytic hierarchy process (Fuzzy-AHP), fuzzy-technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solutions (Fuzzy-TOPSIS) are used in ranking and selecting the target access network. Through simulations, it has been proved that the proposed scheme offers improved performance than the classical and fuzzy-based multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) schemes. The proposed scheme offers 3.45[Formula: see text], 7.33[Formula: see text], 13.51[Formula: see text], 40[Formula: see text] minimum improvement in data rate, handover decision delay, handover blocking probability and number of handovers executed over the classical MADM schemes considered.