A handover mechanism defines the steps involved in the transfer of all information and resource allocation enabling a mobile terminal to remain connected to the wireless network infrastructure. A large number of handover mechanisms have been reported in the literature for Wireless ATM (WATM) networks. In this paper, we carry out a comprehensive QoS performance study of the handover mechanisms as proposed in the literature and a performance evaluation of various buffer management schemes used to compensate for service disruption caused during the handover phase. Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.