An Anticipated Handoff Management Mechanism for Next Generation Wireless Networks Ikram Smaoui 1 , Faouzi Zarai 2 , Lotfi Kamoun 3 University of Sfax, Tunisia 1 smaoui.ikram@gmail.com 2 fbz@certification.tn Abstract- In next generation heterogeneous networks, mobiles users want to benefit from all the advantages of the integrated access networks by switching between them dynamically. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for reducing handoff delay using the received signal strength (RSS) and the mobile station speed to reserve available resources for a user from its adjacent cells according to its current position. The Performances of the proposed scheme are compared with others methods by simulation. Our new scheme reduces not only the handoff blocking probability, but also maintains a low new call blocking probability and high bandwidth utilisation rate. Key-Words: heterogeneous networks, pre-handoff process, delay, blocking probability. I. Introduction The rapid progress in the research and development of wireless networking and communication technologies has created different types of wireless communication systems, such as Bluetooth for personal area, IEEE 802.11 for local area, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) for wide area, and satellite networks for global networking. These networks are complementary to each other and, hence, their integration can realize unified Next-Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN) that has the best features of the individual networks to provide ubiquitous connectivity (1) to the mobile stations. In the integrated NGWN, mobiles stations are always connected to the best available network (2) and roam between different networks based on their service requirements (3). However, it is an important and challenging issue to support seamless mobility management in the NGWN. Indeed, the mobility management contains two aspects: the location management and the handoff management (4). The location management enables the system to track the locations of the mobile stations (MSs) between consecutive communications. On the other hand, the handoff management is the process by which MSs keep their connections active when they move from one attachment point (AP) to another. There exist efficient location management techniques in the literature for NGWN (4). However, seamless scheme of handoff management in NGWN is still an open research issue. In order to reduce the handoff delay, many schemes have been proposed. Some of them are focused on decreasing signalling delay by re- assigning a new network component closer to the MS to serve the Home Agent (HA) function (5). The other schemes are focused on running a pre-handoff mechanism that can be achieved by parallel running of different handoff steps or anticipating some steps of the handoff before the handoff condition is attained (6). However, as well as the handoff process, a pre-handoff mechanism decision must be resolved. Herein, the pre-handoff decision can be further divided into a pre-handoff time decision and a pre- handoff target decision; i.e., to select the best target networks for the ongoing applications roaming across heterogeneous networks. Related work on pre-handoff policy has been presented in recent research literature. The pre- handoff decisions in these works are focused only on the Received Signal Strength (RSS) threshold (6, 7). However, the proposed schemes doesn’t take into consideration many relevant features such as the MS speed, the MS position and the movement pattern that influence the pre- handoff decision and the thresholds management. Furthermore, the pre-handoff schemes described in the related works consider a constant RSS threshold value for all the MSs in the network which it is inappropriate to make a right decision. Consequently, in this paper we propose a pre-handoff scheme that integrates