Performability modelling of handoff in wireless cellular networks with channel failures and recovery

Mobility is one of the major issues in the performance characterization of wireless communication systems. Wireless communication systems encounter failures. These failures can occur because of software, hardware, human error, or a combination of these factors. The probability of an ongoing call being dropped due to a handoff failure and the probability of a new call being blocked due to the temporary unavailability of an idle channel are main metrics that affect the performance of wireless cellular systems. In order to overcome this problem, availability and performance of these systems should be considered together. In this paper, cellular networks with failures and recovery are modelled. The model is based on previous work in performance modelling and availability modelling of such systems. A Markov reward model is used to represent such a system with handoffs. Mean queue length and blocking probability are calculated using an analytical model and presented.