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

Descoberta de serviços independentes do acesso para redes heterogéneas

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaA recente proliferação de nós móveis com múltiplas interfaces sem fios e a constituição de ambientes heterogéneos possibilitaram a criação de cenários complexos onde os operadores de rede necessitam de disponibilizar conectividade para diferentes tipos de redes de acesso. Assim, a norma IEEE 802.21 foi especificada de forma a facilitar e optimizar os procedimentos de handover entre diferentes tecnologias de acesso sem perda de conectividade. Para cumprir o seu propósito, a norma disponibiliza serviços chamados Media Independent Handover e que permitem o controlo e a obtenção de informação de diferentes ligações. A configuração estática destes serviços por parte do nó móvel torna-se ineficiente devido aos múltiplos cenários possíveis. Desta forma, o nó móvel deve descobrir nós da rede que providenciem serviços de mobilidade e as suas capacidade de uma forma dinâmica. Nesta dissertação, um conjunto de mecanismos para descoberta de serviços de handover independentes do acesso são analisados, implementados e avaliados em termos de duração e quantidade de informação trocada. Um novo mecanismo de descoberta de entidades locais é também proposto e avaliado, demonstrando que a sua utilização aumenta o desempenho e requer a troca de menos quantidade de informação.The recent proliferation of mobile nodes with multiple wireless interfaces, in addition to the creation of heterogeneous environments, created complex scenarios where network operators need to provide connectivity for di erent kinds of access networks. Therefore, the IEEE 802.21 standard has been speci ed to facilitate and optimize handover procedures between di erent access technologies in a seamless way. To ful l its purpose, it provides Media Independent Handover services which allow the control and gathering of information from di erent links. The static con guration of these services by the MN becomes ine cient due to the amount of possible scenarios. Thus, the MN must discover the network-supporting nodes and their capabilities in a dynamic way. In this work, a series of proposed Media Independent Handover discovery procedures are analyzed, implemented and evaluated in terms of duration and amount of exchanged information. In addition, a novel discovery procedure for local entities is proposed and evaluated, showing that its deployment increases the performance and requires less information exchanged

Extension of MIH for FPMIPv6 (EMIH-FPMIPv6) to support optimized heterogeneous handover

Fast handover for Proxy Mobile IPv6 (FPMIPv6) can optimize the handover performance compared with PMIPv6 in terms of handover delay and packet loss. However, FPMIPv6 cannot handle heterogeneous handovers due to the lack of unified Layer 2 triggering mechanism. While Media Independent Handover (MIH) can provide heterogeneous handover support, and a lot of MIH-based integration solutions have been proposed. However, most of these solutions are based on the integration of MIH and PMIPv6, and require additional mechanisms such as L2 scanning, handover coordinator or neighbor discovery, which are out of the scope of MIH and difficult to be standardized. Furthermore, the direct integration of MIH and FPMIPv6 will cause redundant signaling cost due to the similar functions such as MIH handover commit procedure in MIH and inter-MAG (Mobility Access Gateway) tunnel setup in FPMIPv6. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on these solutions and compares each solution's functionality and characteristic, and then proposes an integration scheme based on Extension of MIH for FPMIPv6 (EMIH-FPMIPv6) to support optimized heterogeneous handover, which extends the existing MIH standard and reduces the redundant messages interaction caused by FPMIPv6 and MIH. This paper adopts the city section mobility model and heterogeneous networks model to analyze and compare the performance of EMIH-FPMIPv6 under different heterogeneous handover scenarios. The analytical results show that EMIH-FPMIPv6 is capable of reducing the handover delay and the signaling cost compared to the solution specified in MIH standard (noted as standard handover solution) and FPMIPv6. © 201

Enhanced bicasting and buffering

Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references

Middleware de comunicações para a internet móvel futura

Doutoramento em Informática (MAP-I)A evolução constante em novas tecnologias que providenciam suporte à forma como os nossos dispositivos se ligam, bem como a forma como utilizamos diferentes capacidades e serviços on-line, criou um conjunto sem precedentes de novos desafios que motivam o desenvolvimento de uma recente área de investigação, denominada de Internet Futura. Nesta nova área de investigação, novos aspectos arquiteturais estão ser desenvolvidos, os quais, através da re-estruturação de componentes nucleares subjacentesa que compõem a Internet, progride-a de uma forma capaz de não são fazer face a estes novos desafios, mas também de a preparar para os desafios de amanhã. Aspectos chave pertencendo a este conjunto de desafios são os ambientes de rede heterogéneos compostos por diferentes tipos de redes de acesso, a cada vez maior mudança do tráfego peer-to-peer (P2P) como o tipo de tráfego mais utilizado na Internet, a orquestração de cenários da Internet das Coisas (IoT) que exploram mecanismos de interação Maquinaa-Maquina (M2M), e a utilização de mechanismos centrados na informação (ICN). Esta tese apresenta uma nova arquitetura capaz de simultaneamente fazer face a estes desafios, evoluindo os procedimentos de conectividade e entidades envolvidas, através da adição de uma camada de middleware, que age como um mecanismo de gestão de controlo avançado. Este mecanismo de gestão de controlo aproxima as entidades de alto nível (tais como serviços, aplicações, entidades de gestão de mobilidade, operações de encaminhamento, etc.) com as componentes das camadas de baixo nível (por exemplo, camadas de ligação, sensores e atuadores), permitindo uma otimização conjunta dos procedimentos de ligação subjacentes. Os resultados obtidos não só sublinham a flexibilidade dos mecanismos que compoem a arquitetura, mas também a sua capacidade de providenciar aumentos de performance quando comparados com outras soluÇÕes de funcionamento especÍfico, enquanto permite um maior leque de cenáios e aplicações.The constant evolution in new technologies that support the way our devices are able to connect, as well the way we use available on-line services and capabilities, has created a set of unprecedented new challenges that motivated the development of a recent research trend known as the Future Internet. In this research trend, new architectural aspects are being developed which, through the restructure of underlying core aspects composing the Internet, reshapes it in a way capable of not only facing these new challenges, but also preparing it to tackle tomorrow’s new set of complex issues. Key aspects belonging to this set of challenges are heterogeneous networking environments composed by di↵erent kinds of wireless access networks, the evergrowing change from peer-to-peer (P2P) to video as the most used kind of traffic in the Internet, the orchestration of Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios exploiting Machine-to-Machine (M2M) interactions, and the usage of Information-Centric Networking (ICN). This thesis presents a novel framework able to simultaneous tackle these challenges, empowering connectivity procedures and entities with a middleware acting as an advanced control management mechanism. This control management mechanism brings together both high-level entities (such as application services, mobility management entities, routing operations, etc.) with the lower layer components (e.g., link layers, sensor devices, actuators), allowing for a joint optimization of the underlying connectivity and operational procedures. Results highlight not only the flexibility of the mechanisms composing the framework, but also their ability in providing performance increases when compared with other specific purpose solutions, while allowing a wider range of scenarios and deployment possibilities

Mobility management across converged IP-based heterogeneous access networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University, 8/2/2010.In order to satisfy customer demand for a high performance “global” mobility service, network operators (ISPs, carriers, mobile operators, etc.) are facing the need to evolve to a converged “all-IP” centric heterogeneous access infrastructure. However, the integration of such heterogeneous access networks (e.g. 802.11, 802.16e, UMTS etc) brings major mobility issues. This thesis tackles issues plaguing existing mobility management solutions in converged IP-based heterogeneous networks. In order to do so, the thesis firstly proposes a cross-layer mechanism using the upcoming IEEE802.21 MIH services to make intelligent and optimized handovers. In this respect, FMIPv6 is integrated with the IEEE802.21 mechanism to provide seamless mobility during the overall handover process. The proposed solution is then applied in a simulated vehicular environment to optimize the NEMO handover process. It is shown through analysis and simulations of the signalling process that the overall expected handover (both L2 and L3) latency in FMIPv6 can be reduced by the proposed mechanism by 69%. Secondly, it is expected that the operator of a Next Generation Network will provide mobility as a service that will generate significant revenues. As a result, dynamic service bootstrapping and authorization mechanisms must be in place to efficiently deploy a mobility service (without static provisioning), which will allow only legitimate users to access the service. A GNU Linux based test-bed has been implemented to demonstrate this. The experiments presented show the handover performance of the secured FMIPv6 over the implemented test-bed compared to plain FMIPv6 and MIPv6 by providing quantitative measurements and results on the quality of experience perceived by the users of IPv6 multimedia applications. The results show the inclusion of the additional signalling of the proposed architecture for the purpose of authorization and bootstrapping (i.e. key distribution using HOKEY) has no adverse effect on the overall handover process. Also, using a formal security analysis tool, it is shown that the proposed mechanism is safe/secure from the induced security threats. Lastly, a novel IEEE802.21 assisted EAP based re-authentication scheme over a service authorization and bootstrapping framework is presented. AAA based authentication mechanisms like EAP incur signalling overheads due to large RTTs. As a result, overall handover latency also increases. Therefore, a fast re-authentication scheme is presented which utilizes IEEE802.21 MIH services to minimize the EAP authentication process delays and as a result reduce the overall handover latency. Analysis of the signalling process based on analytical results shows that the overall handover latency for mobility protocols will be approximately reduced by 70% by the proposed scheme

HDMM: deploying client and network-based distributed mobility management

Mobile operators are now facing the challenges posed by a huge data demand from users, mainly due to the introduction of modern portable devices and the success of mobile applications. Moreover, users are now capable to connect from different access networks and establish several active sessions simultaneously, while being mobile. This triggered the introduction of a new paradigm: the distributed mobility management (DMM) which aims at flattening the network and distributing the entities in charge of managing users' mobility. In this article, we review existing DMM proposals and describe a hybrid solution which benefits from combining a network-based and a client-based approach. We analyze the signaling cost and the handover latency of our proposal, comparing them with their centralized alternatives. We also include validation and performance results from experiments conducted with a Linux-based prototype, which show that achievable enhancements depend on the underlying network topology. We argue that the proposed hybrid DMM solution provides additional flexibility to the mobile network operators, which can decide when and how to combine these two approaches.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-ICT-2009-5) under Grant agreement n. 258053 (MEDIEVAL project) and from the Spanish Government, MICINN, under research grant TIN2010-20136-C0

Distribuição de vídeo para grupos de utilizadores em redes móveis heterogéneas19

The evolutions veri ed in mobile devices capabilities (storage capacity, screen resolution, processor, etc.) over the last years led to a signi cant change in mobile user behavior, with the consumption and creation of multimedia content becoming more common, in particular video tra c. Consequently, mobile operator networks, despite being the target of architectural evolutions and improvements over several parameters (such as capacity, transmission and reception performance, amongst others), also increasingly become more frequently challenged by performance aspects associated to the nature of video tra c, whether by the demanding requirements associated to that service, or by its volume increase in such networks. This Thesis proposes modi cations to the mobile architecture towards a more e cient video broadcasting, de ning and developing mechanisms applicable to the network, or to the mobile terminal. Particularly, heterogeneous networks multicast IP mobility supported scenarios are focused, emphasizing their application over di erent access technologies. The suggested changes are applicable to mobile or static user scenarios, whether it performs the role of receiver or source of the video tra c. Similarly, the de ned mechanisms propose solutions targeting operators with di erent video broadcasting goals, or whose networks have di erent characteristics. The pursued methodology combined an experimental evaluation executed over physical testbeds, with the mathematical evaluation using network simulation, allowing the veri cation of its impact on the optimization of video reception in mobile terminalsA evolução veri cada nas características dos dispositivos moveis (capacidade de armazenamento, resolução do ecrã, processador, etc.) durante os últimos anos levou a uma alteração signi cativa nos comportamentos dos utilizadores, sendo agora comum o consumo e produção de conteúdos multimédia envolvendo terminais móveis, em particular o tráfego vídeo. Consequentemente, as redes de operador móvel, embora tendo também sido alvo constante de evoluções arquitecturais e melhorias em vários parâmetros (tais como capacidade, ritmo de transmissão/recepção, entre outros), vêemse cada vez mais frequentemente desa adas por aspectos de desempenho associados à natureza do tráfego de vídeo, seja pela exigência de requisitos associados a esse serviço, quer pelo aumento do volume do mesmo nesse tipo de redes. Esta Tese propôe alterações à arquitetura móvel para a disseminação de vídeo mais e ciente, de nindo e desenvolvendo mecanismos aplicáveis à rede, ou ao utilizador móvel. Em particular, são focados cenários suportados por IP multicast em redes móveis heterogéneas, isto é, com ênfase na aplicação destes mecanismos sobre diferentes tecnologias de acesso. As alterações sugeridas aplicam-se a cenários de utilizador estático ou móvel, sendo este a fonte ou receptor do tráfego vídeo. Da mesma forma, são propostas soluções tendo em vista operadores com diferentes objectivos de disseminação de vídeo, ou cujas redes têm diferentes características. A metodologia utilizada combinou a avaliação experimental em testbeds físicas com a avaliação matemática em simulações de redes, e permitiu veri car o impacto sobre a optimização da recepção de vídeo em terminais móveisPrograma Doutoral em Telecomunicaçõe

Virtual Mobility Domains - A Mobility Architecture for the Future Internet

The advances in hardware and wireless technologies have made mobile communication devices affordable by a vast user community. With the advent of rich multimedia and social networking content, an influx of myriads of applications, and Internet supported services, there is an increasing user demand for the Internet connectivity anywhere and anytime. Mobility management is thus a crucial requirement for the Internet today. This work targets novel mobility management techniques, designed to work with the Floating Cloud Tiered (FCT) internetworking model, proposed for a future Internet. We derive the FCT internetworking model from the tiered structure existing among Internet Service Provider (ISP) networks, to define their business and peering relationships. In our novel mobility management scheme, we define Virtual Mobility Domains (VMDs) of various scopes, that can support both intra and inter-domain roaming using a single address for a mobile node. The scheme is network based and hence imposes no operational load on the mobile node. This scheme is the first of its kind, by leveraging the tiered structure and its hierarchical properties, the collaborative network-based mobility management mechanism, and the inheritance information in the tiered addresses to route packets. The contributions of this PhD thesis can be summarized as follows: · We contribute to the literature with a comprehensive analysis of the future Internet architectures and mobility protocols over the period of 2002-2012, in light of their identity and handoff management schemes. We present a qualitative evaluation of current and future schemes on a unified platform. · We design and implement a novel user-centric future Internet mobility architecture called Virtual Mobility Domain. VMD proposes a seamless, network-based, unique collaborative mobility management within/across ASes and ISPs in the FCT Internetworking model. The analytical and simulation-based handoff performance analysis of the VMD architecture in comparison with the IPv6-based mobility protocols presents the considerable performance improvements achieved by the VMD architecture. · We present a novel and user-centric handoff cost framework to analyze handoff performance of different mobility schemes. The framework helps to examine the impacts of registration costs, signaling overhead, and data loss for Internet connected mobile users employing a unified cost metric. We analyze the effect of each parameter in the handoff cost framework on the handoff cost components. We also compare the handoff performance of IPv6-based mobility protocols to the VMD. · We present a handoff cost optimization problem and analysis of its characteristics. We consider a mobility user as the primary focus of our study. We then identify the suitable mathematical methods that can be leveraged to solve the problem. We model the handoff cost problem in an optimization tool. We also conduct a mobility study - best of our knowledge, first of its kind - on providing a guide for finding the number of handoffs in a typical VMD for any given user\u27s mobility model. Plugging the output of mobility study, we then conduct a numerical analysis to find out optimum VMD for a given user mobility model and check if the theoretical inferences are in agreement with the output of the optimization tool