Smart transport layer based mobility for horizontal and vertical handoffs

Mobility management remains an important task to be investigated while integrating homogeneous and heterogeneous wireless networks. Traditionally, IP layer is widely used to implement roaming solutions including Mobile IP, HMIP, FMIP, FHMIP, etc. With the standardization of the Stream Control Transmission Protocol, which offers new interesting features such as multihoming and multistreaming, experiencing mobility at the transport level becomes more attractive. Indeed, this layer is endowed with various connectivity facilities and flow control features that render the transport layer more appropriate to support seamless roaming. To take benefit from these new facilities, several SCTPbased mobility schemes have been proposed. Nevertheless, none can claim to be the ultimate solution since they suffer from drawbacks such as unnecessary handoff delays and signaling loads. Moreover, the throughput measured immediately after a handoff is affected quite considerably by spurious retransmissions due to packet loss and failed Selective Acknowledgment messages (SACKs). In this paper, we propose a smart Hierarchical Transport layer Mobility scheme (sHTM) which deals with homogeneous and heterogeneous handovers, reduces packet loss, handoff latencies and improves throughputs. sHTM exploits the dynamic address reconfiguration feature of SCTP and introduces a new mobility unit to effect more efficient handoff procedures. Simulation results reveal that sHTM guarantees lower handoff latency and good throughput during the handoff period compared to existing mSCTP-based solutions.

Intégration et gestion de mobilité de bout en bout dans les réseaux mobiles de prochaine génération

Résumé - Pendant les dix dernières années, l'utilisation des systèmes de communication sans fil est devenue de plus en plus populaire tant chez les entreprises que chez les particuliers. Cette nouvelle tendance du marché est due, en grande partie, à la performance grandissante des réseaux mobiles qui concurrencent davantage les réseaux filaires en termes de bande passante, de coût et de couverture. Toutefois, cette catégorie de solutions sans fil est conçue pour des services spécifiques et utilise des technologies très variées. De plus, les usagers sont de plus en plus mobiles et requièrent des applications sensibles au délai (voix, multimédia, etc.). Dans ce nouveau contexte de mobilité, la prochaine génération des réseaux sans fil (4G) s'annonce comme l'ultime solution visant à satisfaire les exigences des usagers tout en tirant profit de la complémentarité des services offerts par les systèmes mobiles existants. Pour ce faire, la principale vocation de la future génération (4G) consiste en l'intégration et la convergence des technologies sans fil existantes et celles à venir. Cette intégration passe obligatoirement par l'utilisation du protocole IP (Internet Protocol) qui permet de cacher l'hétérogénéité des systèmes intégrés puisqu'il demeure l'unique couche commune à toutes les plateformes mobiles. Plusieurs solutions d'intégration ont été proposées dans la littérature. Celles-ci concernent des architectures d'intégration et des mécanismes de gestion de mobilité. Cependant, les approches proposées ne font pas l'unanimité et souffrent de plusieurs handicaps liés, en particulier, à l'interopérabilité et la garantie des relèves sans coupures.----------ABSTRACT During the last few years, the use of wireless systems is becoming more and more popular. This tendency can be explained by the fact that mobile technologies are gaining in performance in terms of bandwidth, coverage and cost compared to the traditional wired solutions. However, each mobile network is tailored for a specific type of services and users. Moreover, end users are expected to become more and more mobile and show an increasing interest to real-time applications. In these circumstances, the next generation of mobile networks (4G) appears to be the ultimate solution that will satisfy mobile user demands and take benefit of the existing wireless systems. Indeed, the future generation consists of integrating, in an intelligent manner, the existing/future wireless systems in a way that users can obtain their services via the best available network. This integration passes through the use of the Internet Protocol (IP) that will hide the heterogeneity pertaining to the integrated networks. To deal with this very important task, several solutions are available in the literature. The proposed approaches cover some basic topics such as interworking architecture and mobility management. Nevertheless, these proposals suffer from drawbacks relevant to the guarantee of QoS through heterogeneous technologies