IP Mobile Multicast over Next Generation Satellite Networks. Design and Evaluation of a Seamless Mobility Framework for IP Multicast Communications over a Multi-beam Geostationary Satellite Network

The inherent broadcast nature of satellites, their global coverage and direct access to a large number of subscribers give satellites unrivalled advantages in supporting IP multicast applications. A new generation of satellite systems that support regenerative on-board processors and multiple spot beam technology have opened new possibilities of implementing IP multicast communication over satellites. These new features enable satellites to make efficient use of their allocated bandwidth resources and provide cost effective network services but equally, create new challenges for mobile satellite terminals. IP mobility support in general and IP mobile multicast support in particular on mobile satellite terminals like the ones mounted on continental flights, maritime vessels, etc., still remain big challenges that have received very little attention from the research community. Up till now, there are no proposed mechanisms to support IP multicast for mobile receivers/sources in multi-beam satellite networks in open literature. This study explores the suitability of IP multicast mobility support schemes defined for terrestrial networks in a satellite environment and proposes novel schemes based on the concepts of Home and Remote subscription-based approaches, multiple interface and PMIPv6 protocol. Detailed analysis and comparison of results obtained from the proposed schemes, Mobile IP (MIP) Home and Remote subscription-based approaches (for terrestrial networks) when implemented on a reference multi-beam satellite network are presented. From these results, the proposed schemes outperform the MIP Home and Remote subscription-based approaches in terms of gateway handover latency, number of multicast packets lost and signalling cost over the satellite air interface

Mobility–Aware Rendezvous Point for Mobile Multicast Sources

Current multicast routing protocols have not been designed for mobile nodes and especially roaming sources. Using the remote subscription as basis, we develop a new approach based on a new entity called Mobility-aware Rendezvous Point (MRP) to hide the mobility of a mobile multicast source from the main multicast delivery tree and offer an optimal routing. The key idea of this work is to make the handover of a roaming source transparent and avoid the reconstruction of the entire source-based tree. The MRP maps dynamically the current temporary address of the mobile source with its home address. Thus, a mobile source registers once with the MRP and encapsulates and sends directly its multicast datagrams to the MRP. Then the MRP decapsulates these datagrams and forwards enclosed data natively to the receivers. Keywords: Mobility-aware Rendezvous Point, Mobile IP, mobile multicast, and remote subscription