IP-based mobility and handover optimization

Abstract

As mobile networks continue to grow and converge with the Internet, new wireless devices and their use are outnumbering the use of fixed network. Mobility management needs to meet the requirements of existing and emerging network technologies. It may be supported in different layers of the network protocol stack. At the IP layer, Mobile IP, an IP-based mobility management, has the advantage of being applicable in any IP-based network, but is faced with many deployment challenges. Numerous variants of Mobile IP have been proposed to address these challenges in different network environments. The real test however is in deployment. Both 3GPP and WiMAX have adopted only network-based mobility management, which does not require changes to the IP stack of the mobile hosts. Reasearch in mobility management has become more active, especially with the mobile networks continuing to evolve from hierarchical towards more flattened network. This tutorial presents the basics, recent advances, and future directions for mobility protocols at various layers (e.g., network, transport and application). It provides a taxonomy of mobility protocols. It illustrates a few scenarios to describe applicability of mobility protocols to various network environments. It goes through the best practices, and then provides the research directions.