A Multihoming-Based Vertical Handover Scheme

Abstract

This paper proposes a multihoming-based vertical handover scheme. Mobile nodes must have several radio interfaces to support vertical handover in heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we consider each interface of a mobile node has its own protocol stack with physical, data link, and network layer. When a mobile node moves to a different type of access network, the proposed scheme can provide a mobile node with fast and seamless handover by performing layer-3 handover using its new interface while the other interface is still communicating in the old access network. This scheme uses a newly defined Proxy binding update to minimize handover delay and packet loss while a mobile node moves to a different type of access network. The proposed Proxy binding update is different from the Mobile IP binding update in that it includes home address (HoA) of the old interface instead of the new interface. The performance analysis shows that the proposed scheme can efficiently reduce vertical handover delay and packet loss.