Mobility and Handoff Management in Wireless Networks

With the increasing demands for new data and real-time services, wireless networks should support calls with different traffic characteristics and different Quality of Service (QoS)guarantees. In addition, various wireless technologies and networks exist currently that can satisfy different needs and requirements of mobile users. Since these different wireless networks act as complementary to each other in terms of their capabilities and suitability for different applications, integration of these networks will enable the mobile users to be always connected to the best available access network depending on their requirements. This integration of heterogeneous networks will, however, lead to heterogeneities in access technologies and network protocols. To meet the requirements of mobile users under this heterogeneous environment, a common infrastructure to interconnect multiple access networks will be needed. In this chapter, the design issues of a number of mobility management schemes have been presented. Each of these schemes utilizes IP-based technologies to enable efficient roaming in heterogeneous network. Efficient handoff mechanisms are essential for ensuring seamless connectivity and uninterrupted service delivery. A number of handoff schemes in a heterogeneous networking environment are also presented in this chapter.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figure

Inter-Domain Authentication for Seamless Roaming in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The convergence of diverse but complementary wireless access technologies and inter-operation among administrative domains have been envisioned as crucial for the next generation wireless networks that will provide support for end-user devices to seamlessly roam across domain boundaries. The integration of existing and emerging heterogeneous wireless networks to provide such seamless roaming requires the design of a handover scheme that provides uninterrupted service continuity while facilitating the establishment of authenticity of the entities involved. The existing protocols for supporting re-authentication of a mobile node during a handover across administrative domains typically involve several round trips to the home domain, and hence introduce long latencies. Furthermore, the existing methods for negotiating roaming agreements to establish inter-domain trust rely on a lengthy manual process, thus, impeding seamless roaming across multiple domains in a truly heterogeneous wireless network. In this thesis, we present a new proof-token based authentication protocol that supports quick re-authentication of a mobile node as it moves to a new foreign domain without involving communication with the home domain. The proposed proof-token based protocol can also support establishment of spontaneous roaming agreements between a pair of domains that do not already have a direct roaming agreement, thus allowing flexible business models to be supported. We describe details of the new authentication architecture, the proposed protocol, which is based on EAP-TLS and compare the proposed protocol with existing protocols

IP-Based Mobility Management and Handover Latency Measurement in heterogeneous environments

One serious concern in the ubiquitous networks is the seamless vertical handover management between different wireless technologies. To meet this challenge, many standardization organizations proposed different protocols at different layers of the protocol stack. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has different groups working on mobility at IP level in order to enhance mobile IPv4 and mobile IPv6 with different variants: HMIPv6 (Hierarchical Mobile IPv6), FMIPv6 (Fast Mobile IPv6) and PMIPv6 (Proxy Mobile IPv6) for seamless handover. Moreover, the IEEE 802.21 standard provides another framework for seamless handover. The 3GPP standard provides the Access Network and Selection Function (ANDSF) to support seamless handover between 3GPP – non 3GPP networks like Wi-Fi, considered as untrusted, and WIMAX considered as trusted networks. In this paper, we present an in-depth analysis of seamless vertical handover protocols and a handover latency comparison of the main mobility management approaches in the literature. The comparison shows the advantages and drawbacks of every mechanism in order to facilitate the adoption of the convenient one for vertical handover within Next Generation Network (NGN) environments. Keywords: Seamless vertical handover, mobility management protocols, IEEE 802.21 MIH, handover latenc

Integration of IEEE 802.21 services and pre-authentication framework

Abstract: Providing multi-interface device users the ability to roam between different access networks is becoming a key requirement for service providers. The availability of multiple mobile broadband access technologies together with increasing use of real time multimedia applications is creating strong demand for handover solutions that can seamlessly and securely transfer user sessions across different access technologies. In this paper, we discuss how the Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Integration of IEEE 802.21 services and pre-authentication framework 173 IEEE 802.21 standard and its services address the challenges of seamless mobility for multi-interface devices. We focus on a proof-of-concept implementation that integrates IEEE 802.21 services and a pre-authentication framework, to optimise handover performance in two different scenarios. The first scenario is initiated by the mobile node and the second one is initiated by the network. We present the measurement results for realising these scenarios. Finally, we describe the implementation challenges and lessons learned throug

Kerberos based authentication for inter-domain roaming in wireless heterogeneous network

AbstractAn increased demand in ubiquitous high speed wireless access has led integration of different wireless technologies provided by different administrative domains creating truly a heterogeneous network. Security is one of the major hurdles in such network environment. As a mobile station moves in and out of the coverage area of one wireless network to another, it needs to be authenticated. The existing protocols for authentication of a mobile station are typically centralized, where the home network participates in each authentication process. It requires home network to maintain roaming agreement with all other visiting networks. Moreover, the round trip time to home network results high latency. This paper is focused on developing authentication protocol for wireless network irrespective of the technologies or the administrative domain. We propose a secure protocol which adopts strong features of Kerberos based on tickets for rigorous mutual authentication and session key establishment along with issuance of token so that the mobile station can have access to not only the roaming partner of home network but also to the roaming partner of previous visited networks. The performance evaluation and comparative analysis of the proposed protocol is carried out with the already implemented standard protocols and most remarkable research works till date to confirm the solidity of the results presented

Enhancing PMIPv6 for Better Handover Performance among Heterogeneous Wireless Networks in a Micromobility Domain

This paper analyzes the reduction of handover delay in a network-based localized mobility management framework assisted by IEEE 802.21 MIH services. It compares the handover signaling procedures with host-based localized MIPv6 (HMIPv6), with network-based localized MIPv6 (PMIPv6), and with PMIPv6 assisted by IEEE 802.21 to show how much handover delay reduction can be achieved. Furthermore, the paper proposes and gives an in-depth analysis of PMIPv6 optimized with a handover coordinator (HC), which is a network-based entity, to further improve handover performance in terms of handover delay and packet loss while maintaining minimal signaling overhead in the air interface among converged heterogeneous wireless networks. Simulation and analytical results show that indeed handover delay and packet loss are reduced

A network-based coordination design for seamless handover between heterogeneous wireless networks

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 136-144).The rapid growth of mobile and wireless communication over the last few years has spawned many different wireless networks. These heterogeneous wireless networks are envisioned to interwork over an IP-based infrastructure to realize ubiquitous network service provisioning for mobile users. Moreover, the availability of multiple-interface mobile nodes (MNs) will make it possible to communicate through any of these wireless access networks. This wireless network heterogeneity combined with the availability of multiple-interface MNs creates an environment where handovers between the different wireless access technologies become topical during mobility events. Therefore, operators with multiple interworking heterogeneous wireless networks will need to facilitate seamless vertical handovers among their multiple systems. Seamless vertical handovers ensure ubiquitous continuity to active connections hence satisfy the quality of experience of the mobile users

Host mobility management with identifier-locator split protocols in hierarchical and flat networks

Includes abstractIncludes bibliographical references.As the Internet increasingly becomes more mobile focused and overloaded with mobile hosts, mobile users are bound to roam freely and attach to a variety of networks. These different networks converge over an IP-based core to enable ubiquitous network access, anytime and anywhere, to support the provision of services, that is, any service, to mobile users. Therefore, in this thesis, the researcher proposed network-based mobility solutions at different layers to securely support seamless handovers between heterogeneous networks in hierarchical and flat network architectures

IEEE 802.21 in heterogeneous handover environments

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaO desenvolvimento das capacidades tecnológicas dos terminais móveis, e das infra-estruturas que os suportam, potenciam novos cenários onde estes dispositivos munidos com interfaces de diferentes tecnologias vagueiam entre diferentes ambientes de conectividade. É assim necessário providenciar meios que facilitem a gestão de mobilidade, permitindo ao terminal ligar-se da melhor forma (i.e., optando pela melhor tecnologia) em qualquer altura. A norma IEEE 802.21 está a ser desenvolvida pelo Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) com o intuito de providenciar mecanismos e serviços que facilitem e optimizem handovers de forma independente da tecnologia. A norma 802.21 especifica assim um conjunto de mecanismos que potenciarão cenários como o descrito acima, tendo em conta a motivação e requerimentos apresentados por arquitecturas de redes futuras, como as redes de quarta geração (4G). Esta dissertação apresenta uma análise extensiva da norma IEEE 802.21, introduzindo um conjunto de simulações desenvolvidas para estudar o impacto da utilização de mecanismos 802.21 em handovers controlados por rede, numa rede de acesso mista composta por tecnologias 802.11 e 3G. Os resultados obtidos permitiram verificar a aplicabilidade destes conceitos a ambientes de próxima geração, motivando também uma descrição do desenho de integração de mecanismos 802.21 a arquitecturas de redes de quarta geração. ABSTRACT: The development of the technological capabilities of mobile terminals, and the infra-structures that support them, enable new scenarios where these devices using different technology interfaces roam in different connectivity environments. This creates a need for providing the means that facilitate mobility management, allowing the terminal to connect in the best way possible (i.e., by choosing the best technology) at any time. The IEEE 802.21 standard is being developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to provide mechanisms and services supporting Media Independent Handovers. The 802.21 standard specifies a set of mechanisms that enable scenarios like the one described above, considering the motivation and requirements presented by future network architectures, such as the ones from fourth generation networks (4G). This thesis presents an extensive analysis of the IEEE 802.21 standard, introducing a set of simulations developed for studying the impact of using 802.21 mechanisms in network controlled handovers, in a mixed access network composed of 802.11 and 3G technologies. The obtained results allow the verification of the applicability of these concepts into next generation environments, also motivating the description of the design for integration of 802.21 mechanisms to fourth generation networks