Mobile users and applications are putting pressure on wireless network operators to improve the seamless handover of devices and services. Strong business competition for subscribers, along with the ever increasing availability of wireless networks will give nomadic and mobile users the opportunity, and systems the power, to make better handover decisions. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of the literature on mobility management architectures for seamless handover of mobile users in heterogeneous networks. We describe the design rationale for selected architectures, with an in-depth analysis of their main goals, assumptions, and requirements. We also provide directions for further work in this field by highlighting the mandatory requirements and the features of future architectures. We then present a new architecture called Context-Aware Mobility Management System (CAMMS). CAMMS is a new cross-layer, context-aware and interactive approach to seamless handover of users and services. With that proposal, we identified the essential functional entities that must be part of future architectures.

Vertical Mobility Management Architectures in Wireless Networks: A Comprehensive Survey and Future Directions

Mobility management is one of the most challenging research issues for vehicular networks to support a variety of intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications. The traditional mobility management schemes for Internet and mobile ad hoc network (MANET) cannot meet the requirements of vehicular networks, and the performance degrades severely due to the unique characteristics of vehicular networks (e.g., high mobility). Therefore, mobility management solutions developed specifically for vehicular networks would be required. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on mobility management for vehicular networks. First, the requirements of mobility management for vehicular networks are identified. Then, classified based on two communication scenarios in vehicular networks, namely, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, the existing mobility management schemes are reviewed. The differences between host-based and network-based mobility management are discussed. To this end, several open research issues in mobility management for vehicular networks are outlined. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mobility and handoff management in vehicular networks: a survey

In this paper researchers describe an optimization scheme for handover procedures as found in the fast handover for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) protocol using a media independent handover (MIH) service. Radio access discovery and candidate access router (AR) discovery problems with FMIPv6 are addressed using the lower three layers' information found in the mobile node/router (MN/MR) as well as the neighboring access network. The static and dynamic L2 and L3 information is stored in an Information Element Container presented herein alongside a special caching device that is maintained by MN/MR that reduces anticipation time. This then increases probabilities of proper prediction for FMIPv6. A cross-layer protocol mechanism is presented that makes intelligent handover decisions, improving the quality of service (QoS) parameters. Analysis and simulations of the presented systems are presented.

Optimized FMIPv6 Using IEEE 802.32 MIH Services in Vehicular Networks

In this paper, we optimize the handover procedure in the fast handover for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) protocol by using the IEEE 802.21 media independent handover (MIH) services. FMIPv6 is used to enhance the performance of handovers in mobile IPv6 and its basic extension for network mobility (NEMO), i.e., the fundamental mobility management protocols used in vehicular networks. With the aid of the lower three layers' information of the mobile node/router (MN/MR) and the neighboring access networks, we tackle the radio access discovery and candidate access router (AR) discovery issues of FMIPv6. We introduce an "information element container" to store static and dynamic layer 2 (L2) and layer 3 (L3) information of neighboring access networks and propose to use a special cache maintained by the MN/MR to reduce the anticipation time in FMIPv6, thus increasing the probability of the predictive mode of FMIPv6 operation. Furthermore, we propose a cross-layer mechanism for making intelligent handover decisions in FMIPv6. The lower layer information of the available links obtained by MIH services and the higher layer information such as quality-of-service (QoS) parameter requirements of the applications are used by a policy engine to make intelligent handover decision. We will show through analysis and simulations of the signaling procedure that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be significantly reduced in the proposed mechanism.

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Optimized FMIPv6 Using IEEE 802.21 MIH Services in Vehicular Networks

While host mobility support for individual mobile hosts (MHs) has been widely investigated and developed over the past years, there has been relatively less attention to NEtwork MObility (NEMO). Since NEMO Basic Support (NEMO-BS) was developed, it has been the central pillar in Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) communication architectures for maintaining the vehicle's Internet connectivity. As the vehicle moves around, it attaches to a new access network and is required to register a new address obtained from the new access network to a home agent (HA). This location update of NEMO-BS often results in unacceptable long handover latency and increased traffic load to the vehicle. To address these issues, in this paper, we introduce new NEMO support protocols, which rely on mobility service provisioning entities introduced in Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), as possible mobility support protocols for ITS. As a base protocol, we present PMIPv6-based NEMO (P-NEMO) to maintain the vehicle's Internet connectivity while moving and without participating in the location update management. In P-NEMO, the mobility management for the vehicle is supported by mobility service provisioning entities residing in a given PMIPv6 domain. To further improve handover performance, fast P-NEMO (FP-NEMO) has been developed as an extension protocol. FP-NEMO utilizes wireless L2 events to anticipate the vehicle's handovers. The mobility service provisioning entities prepare the vehicle's handover prior to the attachment of the vehicle to the new access network. Detailed handover procedures for P-NEMO and FP-NEMO are provided, and handover timing diagrams are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed protocols. P-NEMO and FP-NEMO are compared with NEMO-BS in terms of traffic cost and handover latency.

Performance Analysis of PMIPv6-Based NEtwork MObility for Intelligent Transportation Systems

The emerging IEEE802.21 standard defines Media Independent Handover Functions (MIHF) that assist mobile nodes to seamlessly roam across heterogeneous access networks. The aim of this paper is to present a mechanism which uses existing IEEE802.21 MIH services to optimize the Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) procedure. For this, we have exploited the 802.21 Information services in particular to tackle issues such as radio access discovery and candidate access router discovery which are critical to the handover performance of FMIPv6. We will show through analysis that, when our proposed mechanism is applied, it increases the probability of predictive mode of operation by reducing the anticipation time and thereby reduces the overall expected handover latency in FMIPv6.

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Wenbing Yao

Papers

Optimized FMIPv6 Using IEEE 802.32 MIH Services in Vehicular Networks

Optimized FMIPv6 Using IEEE 802.21 MIH Services in Vehicular Networks

Optimized FMIPv6 handover using IEEE802.21 MIH services