Terminal handover in software-defined WLANs

Abstract

With the development of wireless LAN (WLAN) technology, wireless access points (APs) are deployed increasingly more and the number of mobile terminals is increasing. It is normal for a mobile terminal to hand over its AP. The traditional terminal handover method cannot effectively control the handover delay and balance the network load due to the inherent drawbacks such as closed encapsulation and the lack of centralized control. In this paper, we introduce the innovative network architecture of software-defined networking (SDN), propose a software-defined WLAN architecture, and propose a seamless handover method and a load balancing handover method of the software-defined WLAN. Experimental results show that the proposed handover method effectively reduces the handover delay, balances the network load, and improves the quality of service (QoS) and resource utilization of the network.