Delay Analysis for Packet Forward Scheme in Wireless Packet Networks

In a packet-switched wireless cellular network, a packet destined to a mobile station is queued at a base station and then broadcast over the base station's cell. When an active mobile station leaves a cell, there re-main packets which are destined to the mobile and not yet delivered to it at the cell's base station. For application which are sensitive to packet losses, such back- logged packets must be forwarded to the new base station. Otherwise, an end-to-end retransmission may be required. However, an increase in packet delay is incurred by employing the packet forward scheme, since a packet may be forwarded many times before it is delivered to the destined mobile station. For an enhanced quality-of-service level, it is preferred to reduce tile packet delay time. In this paper, we develop an analytical approximation method for deriving mean packet delay times. Using the approximation and simulation methods, we investigate the effect of network parameters on the packet delay time.