Abstract
The Guard Channel (GC) scheme is an extensively deployed handover prioritization policy in wireless mobile networks due to its appealing properties of easy implementation and flexible control. Self-similar traffic has been demonstrated to be a ubiquitous phenomenon in modern communication networks and many measurement studies have demonstrated that the call holding times in wireless mobile networks follow heavy-tailed lognormal distributions. However, existing analytical models for the handover scheme usually assume that both new and handover calls can be modelled by traditional Markovian arrival processes and call holding times can be characterized by exponential distributions. In order to obtain a deep understanding of the performance behaviour of the GC-based handover scheme under more realistic working conditions, this paper presents a new analytical model for this scheme in the presence of self-similar new call and handover call arrivals and heavy-tailed lognormal call holding times. We derive the blocking probability of new calls and the dropping probability of handover calls. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to validate the accuracy of the developed model.