1

A Handoff Algorithm Based on Combination of RSSI and

Distance for Wireless Relay Networks
Guowei CHEN,

Wipaporn CLAYBOOT, Kenichi ITOH, and Takuro SATO
Summary
A handoff algorithm with the criterion of linear combination of
RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and distance is
proposed. The system model under study is a multi-hop network
with two fixed access points, some moving terminal repeaters,
and a mobile terminal. The mobile terminal moves from one
access point to the other, and makes handoff thru the terminal
repeaters to maintain access to service. Simulation is made and
the results are compared against two other algorithms, which
either count on RSSI only or count on distance only. It is found
that the proposed algorithm achieves lower handoff percentage
and outage occurrence.
Key words:
Distance, Handoff, Multi-hop, RSSI
1. Introduction
Recent findings in the literature have shown that the
performance of wireless relay networks can be improved
through the application of distributed spatial diversity
techniques that leverage cooperation between wireless
terminals, where some Mobile Terminals (MTs) can serve
as Terminal Repeaters (TRs) to extend the network
coverage. Such a network structure can be applied in
multiple situations, e.g., in a disaster area, where the ability
of coverage has been greatly compromised due to damage
of large-scale antenna, an emergency solution is to turn
some powerful user terminals into repeater mode, which
help relaying for other users. Another applicable situation
can be found in communication of underway community,
where deployment of some moving small-ranged
transmission devices provide relaying functions for
underground mobile users to certain access points, which
connecting the underground and the surface
communication. One more application can be found in
certain local areas where large-scale antenna are sparse and
the coverage is limited, and thus certain powerful user
terminals can take responsibility as repeaters to help in
enlarging the coverage.
The above situations of applications require multi-hop
handoff technology. In abstract, it can be described as
follows, an MT disconnecting from an Access Point (AP)
can relay its handoff to a TR and use it as a temporary AP.
Decision of handoff triggering can be on various criteria,
such as received signal strength. But with either signal
strength or distance as criterion, there are situations where
unwanted handoff happens. For example, due to shadow
fading, a temporary drop (20 db ~ 30 db) in the measured
signal strength from a serving node (AP or TR), may lead
the signal strength algorithm to perform a handoff to an
adjacent node even if the MT is well within in the service
area of the serving node. As the drop is temporary, the MT
is then handed over to the original base station when the
measured signal strength level recovers. Handoffs in this
situation are not necessary, which leads to unnecessary
consumption of channel resources. On the other hand,
imprecision in distance estimation makes the distance
algorithm not always reliable. These unwanted handoff
cases can compromise performance in handoff percentage
and outage percentage. On the distance, Recently radio
location techniques such as hyperbolic positioning [1]
using Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) signals from
neighboring base stations or Time Of Arrival (TOA)
signals from a Global Positioning System (GPS) has
provided the capability for mobile stations to continually
track the location, so distance can be used as an indicator
for handoff.
Article [2] gives a research on distance-assisted handoff,
whose network model is cellular system with fixed base-
stations. Wireless relay networks have emerged as a new
form of networks and attract research focus, a research
with consideration of mobility of the intermediate nodes is
done in this paper. Furthermore, in [2] with the distance-
assisted handoff algorithm the average outage number is
increased, which is a drawback. This is because the
algorithm requires both distance and RSSI conditions
satisfied to start a handoff procedure. In this paper, a new
criterion of combination of distance and RSSI has been
proposed to remove the absoluteness of both conditions.
In the rest of this paper, the content will be organized as
follows. Section 2 presents the new criterion of handoff
and the outage notion used in this article, section 3
describes the system model, section 4 presents the
derivations of handoff and outage probability functions
and sets out the performance criteria, section 5 gives the
simulation results, and conclusion is made at section 6.


2
2. Proposed Criterion for Handoff
As similar to handoff procedures adopted in [2], the
handoff procedures used in this paper are Mobile-Assisted
Hand-Over (MAHO) algorithms. A handoff process
becomes requested when the value of a certain criterion
from the serving node (AP or TR) falls below that of an
adjacent node by a threshold. Once a handoff is requested,
the MT searches among the other nodes for those which
are capable of serving it. A handoff is performed to the
most appropriate node among them in terms of the
criterion used.
For the conventional algorithm that is only based on signal
strength, the above criterion is RSSI (Received Signal
Strength Indicator). For the algorithm based only on
distance, the criterion is distance.
For the proposed algorithm in this paper, a linear
combination of RSSI and distance, denoted as c as below,
is used as the criterion.

RSSI DIST W c + =
(1)

where W is a constant, which is referred as weight of
distance here. With the nature of linear combination, many
computation methods used in analysis of the conventional
RSSI-only algorithm can be inherited.
1. Handoff conditions:
The two conditions below are required for a complete
handoff process.
1) Handoff requested condition
The criterion value from the serving node falls below that
of an adjacent node by a hysteresis value h.
2) Handoff selective condition
The criterion value from the candidate node is the
maximum among all nodes.
Likewise, correspondent handoff conditions can be defined
for an RSSI-only algorithm, with only differences on the
criteria and the directions of quantity comparison.
2. Outage definition:
To make it comparable for all the above three algorithms,
in this paper, outage is defined in terms of signal strength:
An outage event occurs if the handoff requested condition
is not satisfied when the measured signal strength level
from the serving node falls below an absolute quality
threshold level. From here, E
AP
is referred as the threshold
below which the signal from an AP to the MT falls,
causing an outage, and likewise, E
TR
for the threshold of
the signal from TR to the MT.
3. System Model
The network model is illustrated in figure 1. There are two
fixed Access Points (AP
m,
m = 1, 2) deployed, and a
mobile terminal (MT) moves from AP
1
to AP
2
in a straight
line at a constant velocity . A certain number (N) of
Terminal Repeaters (TRs) are in between of the two APs.
Different from [2], they are moving randomly. As for
simulations purpose, their initial locations are set on the
straight line with equal distance to each other dividing the
whole distance between the two APs, and their movement
is designed to be moving at random speed, with the mean
of , changing direction in random periodically. They
serve as service relay for the
MT. As long as the MT moves along its route, it tries to
maintain the access to service by making handoff among
the APs and TRs.
Regarding to the propagation of the received signal
strength level, it is assumed signal strength is affected by
path loss as well as shadowing effect [3]. Rayleigh fading
is neglected here because it can be averaged out over the
time scale considered. The signal level received from AP
m

in the k
th
interval of sampling, denoted as y
APm
(k) , is given
by

) ( )) ( log( ) (
2 1
k k d K K k y
APm APm
+ =
(2)

where K
1
and K
2
represent the path loss factors, d
APm
(k)

denotes the distance between the MT and the AP
m
, and (k)
represents the shadowing variables, which are modeled as
an independent WSS (Wide-Sense Stationary) Gaussian
process with auto-correlation as follows:

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
0
2
exp ) (
d
t
o t

(3)

where d
0
denotes the decay of correlation with distance
and
2

o
denotes the variance of the shadowing process.

AP
1


AP
2

MT
TR
n

TR
2

TR
1

Fig. 1. Network Model

3


(k)
The signal level received from TR
m
(m=1, 2, , N),
denoted as y
TRm
(k) , is given by

) ( ) ( )) ( log( ) (
2 1
k k k d K K k y
TRm TRm
u + + =
(4)

where d
TRm
(k) denotes the distance between the MT and
the TR
m
, and (k) represents TRs random movement
factor, which are modeled as an independent WSS
Gaussian process with the variance
2
u
o
.











Fig. 2. Signal Strength Propagation Model

Figure 2 is the signal strength propagation model. The
received signal levels are smoothed using an exponential
window function in order to reduce short-term fading
effects. The smoothed signal levels are given by the
convolution

) ( exp
1
) (
1 0 1
l k y
d
l
d
k y
APm
l
APm

|
|
.
|

\
|
=

=
(5)
) ( exp
1
) (
1 0 1
l k y
d
l
d
k y
TRm
l
TRm

|
|
.
|

\
|
=

=
(6)

where d
1
is the distance constant of the smoothing window.
The estimated distances from MT to AP
m
or TR
n
are given
by

) ( ) ( ) ( k n k d k x
APm APm APm
+ =
(7)
) (
) ( ) ( ) (
k TRn TRn TPn TPn
k n k d k x c + + =
(8)

where n
APm
(k) represents the distance estimation error,
n
TRn
(k) represent the estimation error which is modeled as
white, zero-mean independent Gaussian data with variance
2
n
o
; and
) (k TRn
c represents the random movement factor of
the TRs, which is modeled as zero-mean, independent
white Gaussian process with variance
2
c
o
. The estimated
distance x
APm
(k) , x
TRm
(k) are smoothed over a window of L
samples for handoff decision. The distance estimation error
then becomes a Wide-Sense Stationary (WSS) Gaussian
signal with auto-correlation, as follows

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
L
n n
t
o t 1 exp ) (
2
(9)

According to (1), the values of the criterion are defined as

) ( ) ( ) ( k y k x W k c
APm APm APm
+ = (10)
) ( ) ( ) ( k y k x W k c
TRm TRm TRm
+ = (11)

The relative values of the criterion are defined as

) ( ) ( ) ( k c k c k c
APn APm APAPmn
=
(12)
) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( k c k c k c k c
TRn APm TRAPmn APTRmn
= =
(13)
) ( ) ( ) ( k c k c k c
TRn TRm TRTRmn
=
(14)

4. Performance Analysis
4.1 Derivation of Handoff and Outage Probability
Functions
Let P
ho
(k) denote the probability that there is a handoff in
interval k, let P
APn|APm
(k) denote the probability of handoff
from AP
m
to AP
n
, and let P
|APm
(k) be the probability that
the MT is assigned to AP
m
. We have the following
recursive relations:

)
`

+
+
)
`

+
=

= = =
=
= = =
=
N
m n n
TRm TRn
n
TRm APn
N
m
TRm
N
n
APm TRn
m n n
APm APn
m
APm ho
k P k P
k P
k P k P
k P k P
, 1
|
2
1
|
1
1
|
2
, 1
|
2
1
) ( ) (
) 1 (
) ( ) (
) 1 ( ) (
(15)

{ } { }

[ [
=
= =
= = =
+
+

=
N
n
TRn APm find TRn
m n n
APn APm find APn
N
n
APm TRn
m n n
APm APn
APm APm
k P k P
k P k P
k P k P
k P k P
1
| _
2
, 1
| _
1
|
2
, 1
|
) ( ) 1 (
) ( ) 1 (
) ( 1 ) ( 1
) 1 ( ) (
(16)

distance
signal
level
K
1
K
2
log(d
APm
(k))
d
APm
(k)


(k)


4
{ } { }

[ [
= =
=
= = =
+
+

=
N
m n n
TRn TRm find TRn
n
APn TRm find APn
N
m n n
TRm TRn
n
TRm APn
TRm TRm
k P k P
k P k P
k P k P
k P k P
, 1
| _
2
1
| _
, 1
|
2
1
|
) ( ) 1 (
) ( ) 1 (
) ( 1 ) ( 1
) 1 ( ) (
(17)

where P
find_APm|APn
(k) denotes the probability of successful
handoff. It can be expressed as follows:

} ) ( { ) ( ) (
| | _ AP APn APm APn APn APm find
F k c P k P k P > =

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
AP
APn AP
APm APn
k C F
Q k P
o
) (
) (
|
(18)

where F
AP
is the threshold correspondent to E
AP
, whose
value is linked by the linear combination, and
) (k C
APn
and
AP
o denote the expected value and the standard deviation
of the criterion
) (k c
APn
. And it is noticeable that a linear
transformation on a Gaussian process yields a Gaussian
process.
Let P
out
(k) denote the probability that there is an outage at
interval k.

)
`

+
+
)
`

+
=

= = =
=
= = =
=
N
m n n
TRm TRn lost
n
TRm APn lost
N
m
TRm
N
n
APm TRn lost
m n n
APm APn lost
m
APm out
k P k P
k P
k P k P
k P k P
, 1
| _
2
1
| _
1
1
| _
2
, 1
| _
2
1
) ( ) (
) 1 (
) ( ) (
) 1 ( ) (
(19)

where P
lost_APn|APm
(k) denotes the probability of an outage
from AP
m
to AP
n
.

} ) ( { ) ( ) (
| | _ AP APn APm APn APm APn lost
F k c P k P k P < =

)
`

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
AP
APn AP
APm APn
k C F
Q k P
o
) (
1 ) (
|
(20)

It can be seen that if P
APn|APm
(k), P
APn|TRm
(k), P
TRn|APm
(k) and
P
TRn|TRm
(k) are solved, the above computation can all be
solved. As an example, P
APn|APm
(k) is evaluated as below.
{ }
{ }
{ }
{ }
{ }
{ }
1
1 1
1
max ,
max ,
|
) 1 (
) 1 ( , ) (
) ( ) (
) 1 (
) 1 ( , ) ( ,
) 1 ( | ) ( ,
)} 1 ( | ) ( { ) (
G
F E
h k c P
h k c h k c P
k c k c P
h k c P
h k c h k c c P
h k c h k c c P
k APm k APn P k P
APAPmn
APAPmn APAPmn
N
l
TRl APn
APAPmn
APAPmn APAPmn APn
APAPmn APAPmn APn
APm APn

=
>
|
|
|
.
|

\
|
> <
>
=
>
> <
=
> < =
=
[
=
(21)

where
{ }
max , APn
c P
denotes the probability that the criterion
value from AP
n
is the maximum. Probability functions E
1
,
F
1
and G
1
above can be computed as follows:
[
}
=

)
`

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
N
l
k APn
TR
TRl
dt t f
k C t
Q E
1
) ( 1
) (
) (
1
o
(22)
( )
}

|
|
|
|
|
.
|

\
|
|
|
.
|

\
|

=
h
k APAPmn
APAPmn
APAPmn APAP
APAPmn
dt t f
k C t
k C h
Q
F
APAP
) (
) 1 (
) (
1
) 1 (
1
1 2

(23)
|
|
.
|

\
|
=
APAPmn
APAPmn
k C h
Q G
o
) 1 (
1
(24)

where
) (k C
TRl
and
TR
o
denote the expected value and the
standard deviation of the criterion
) (k c
TRl
, f
APn(k)
(t) and
f
APAPn(k-1)
(t) are the probability density function,
) (k C
APAPmn
and
APAPmn
o
denote the expected value and the
standard deviation of the relative criterion
) (k c
APAPmn
, and
APAP

is the correlation coefficient between

) 1 ( k c
APAPmn
and
) (k c
APAPmn
.
P
APn|TRm
(k), P
TRn|APm
(k) and P
TRn|TRm
(k) can be computed in
a similar manner.
4.2 Performance Criteria
As stated at the beginning, the aim of the research is to
avoid unnecessary handoff events while keeping an
acceptable outage ratio. The average number of handoff
and average number of outages are to measure the
performance of the algorithms. The average number of
handoffs can be defined here as

=
=
K
k
ho ho
k P N
1
) (
, where K is
the number of samples. The average number of outages
5
can be defined as

=
=
K
k
out out
k P N
1
) (
.

Main parameters for simulation are shown in table .
TABLE
DEFAULT VALUES OF MAIN PARAMETERS
Parameters Value
Distance between AP1 and AP2 300 m
Numbers of TRs 3
Factor K1 0
Factor K2 -30
Velocity of mobile terminal () 20m/s
Velocity of terminal repeaters () 5m/s
Min RSSI thresholds (EAp & ETR) -75db
Numbers of sampling filter (L) 1
Correlation decay (d0) 20 m
Correlation filter (d1) 30 m
Handoff hysteresis value (h) 6
S.D. of distance estimation (
2
n
o
)
3
S.D. of random movement of TRs (
2
c
o
)
2
4.3 Analytical Results
1) Performance vs. influence by
2

o

It is expectable that the value of W will affect the values of
N
ho
and N
out
. Below, calculation with different values of W
has been done, and results with several values of W will be
shown. Figure 3 and Figure 4 shows the different values of
N
ho
and N
out
against
2

o
, with algorithm RSSI-only and
Linear Combination algorithm with different W values.
4
4.5
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
1 5 9 13 17 21 25
Handoff
Times
RSSI W=-0.1 W=-0.2 W=-0.3 W=-0.4

Fig 3 Handoff Times (Influence of Shadowing Process)

From figure 3, it shows that generally handoff times
increase, except that curve RSSI goes down when shadow
effect is too serious, whose reason is signals from both two
APs are too weak and thus RSSI-only condition will
trigger less handoffs, but the price is that outage goes
higher, as shown in figure 4.

0
0.0002
0.0004
0.0006
0.0008
0.001
0.0012
1 5 9 13 17 21 25
Outage
Times
RSSI W=-0.1 W=-0.2 W=-0.3 W=-0.4

Fig 4 Outage Times (Influence of Shadowing Process)

It is seen that RSSI-only algorithm will result in significant
outage increase as the variance of shadowing process
increases; and it is seen that the Linear-combination brings
less outage with all the enumerated values; furthermore, W
= -0.3 has quite good performance in the whole selected
range of
2

o
.

2) Performance vs. Influence by
2
n
o

Figure 5 and figure 6 shows the influence of the error in
distance estimation.
4
4.5
5
5.5
6
6.5
7
1 4 7 10 13 16
Handoff
Times
rssi -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4

Fig. 5 Handoff Times (Influence of Distance-Estimation)



0
0.0001
0.0002
0.0003
0.0004
0.0005
0.0006
0.0007
0.0008
1 4 7 10 13 16
Outage
Times
rssi -0.1 -0.2 -0.3 -0.4

Fig. 6 Outage Times (Influence of Distance-Estimation)

It is seen that as the error of distance-estimation increases,
both N
ho
and N
out
increase, for all curves, which is natural;
S.D. of Shadowing Process (
2

o
)
S.D. of Distance-Estimation Error (
2
n
o
)
S.D. of Shadowing Process (
2

o
)
S.D. of Distance-Estimation Error (
2
n
o
)


6
and it is also seen that algorithm RSSI-only is
outperformed by Linear-Combination within a large part of
the selected range of
2
n
o
, especially in terms of N
out
where
distance-estimation is significant; furthermore, both W = -
0.3 and W = -0.2 bring fairly good results.
5. Simulation
Experiments of software simulation have been taken with
software OMNET++. In the following simulations, W = -
0.3 is used as the default value.
5.1 Performance Improvements in Simulation
In experiments of simulation, each occurrence of handoff
or outage is recorded with its happening spot. And with
repeated tests, such data is accumulated for examination.
Figure 7 and figure 8 shows the distribution of handoffs
and outages along the path from AP
1
to AP
2
.



Fig 7. Handoff Times of Simulations of RSSI and Linear-Comb




Fig 8. Outage Times of Simulations of RSSI and Linear-Comb

As expected previously, the combination of RSSI and
distance brings the benefit of avoiding certain unwanted
handoffs. This can be shown in figure 7, where the vertical
axe is the times of handoff happening, and the horizontal
axis is the distance between MT and AP
1
. Figure 8 shows
the performance in outage occurrence of different
algorithms, where the vertical axis is the times of outage
happenings, and the horizontal axis is the distance between
MT and AP
1
. It can be seen that the combination of
distance and RSSI helps in reducing outage cases, since it
improve the likelihood of MTs being served by a nearer
AP or TR, where outage possibility is obviously lower than
being served by a farther server.
5.2 Influence of MT velocity
To investigate the influence by MT velocity, experiments
have been done. Figure 9 and figure 10 show the handoff
times and outage times versus the MT velocity. It can be
seen that as MT velocity increases, handoff times and
outage times decrease. It can still be seen that the Linear
Combination outperforms in both N
ho
and N
out.

It shows that as MT velocity increases, N
ho
and N
out
goes
less, which should hold if the velocity is within a certain
range. This is because higher velocity causes less duration
of the tour of MT between APs, and thus suffers less from
the occasional shadowing effect.



Fig 9. Handoff times vs. MT Velocity




Fig 10. Outage Times vs. MT Velocity
7
6. Conclusion
In this article, a handoff algorithm with combination of
RSSI and distance has been proposed, and from the
analytical results and simulation results, it achieves a lower
handoff rate then the traditional RSSI-only algorithm, and
has a better result in outage percentage too, which shows
better ability to resist the influence by shadow fading.
And according to the parameter-influence results, this
conclusion is relatively insensitive to the levels of shadow
effect, distance estimation error, and MTs velocity. If the
standard deviation of the estimated distance can be
improved by employing a high-accuracy location method
such as differential GPS or real-time kinematic GPS, the
average number of handoffs and outages may be reduced
even further.
Deploying more TRs is expected to provide larger
coverage area and then bring less outage, but a side effect
would be that more handoffs might be caused between the
TRs. Therefore, an approach to decide the reasonable
number of TRs should be considered, especially in cases
where some user terminals are chosen to be TRs.
For the continuation of this paper, it is significant to
develop a more practical solution to the computation of the
optimum value of W via formulas. And it is possibly
beneficial to develop a mechanism of dynamic W value
subject to changes in network environment.


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Fig 5. Outage
distribution of
different handoff
algorithms