A hybrid handover protocol for local area wireless ATM networks

Abstract

While handovers of voice calls in a wide area mobile environment are well understood, handovers of multi-media traffic in a local area mobile environment is still in its early stage of investigation. Unlike the public wireless networks, handovers for multi-media Wireless LANs (WLANs) have special requirements. In this paper, the problems and challenges faced in a multi-media WLAN environment are outlined and a multi-tier wireless cell clustering architecture is introduced. Design issues for multi-media handovers are specified and a fast, continuous and efficient hybrid handover protocol is proposed. The protocol is scalable and supports source and destination mobile handovers in a mutually exclusive manner. Crossover switch (CX) discovery is also introduced to support fast inter-cluster handovers with consideration given to Mobile Quality of Service (M-QoS). The resulting wireless ATM LAN exhibits a distributed mobile location management, call admission control and handover management architecture. A prototype of the proposed handover protocol is implemented into a Cambridge Fairisle ATM switch and the results of handovers for a single Mobile Host (MH) with a single on-going connection are evaluated. It was found that implementing transport mobility for a wireless ATM environment is not practical as the cell re-routing function changes the traffic characteristics and is not scalable to increasing cell rate and to the number of mobile connections. The data-link layer mobility implementation however, is found to work well. The protocol provides symmetric data disruption to traffic flows in both directions and up to seventy-five intra-cluster handovers can be supported in a second. Throughout the experiment, cells arrive in sequence with no cell loss observed during the handover, up to the capacity limit of the ATM switch. Finally, `zig-zag' handovers and handovers for a single MH with multiple ongoing unicast connections are performed in order to evaluate the robustness and performance of the protocol under different MHs' migration and communication environment.