An Efficient Framework for Local Mobility

Abstract

To improve the local mobility performance of a wireless network, we present a new framework, namely Efficient Framework for Local Mobility (EFLoM). In EFLoM, we introduce three entities: Local Anchor Router (LAR), Wireless Access Gateway (WAG) and Mobile Node (MN). LAR is a router that is in charge of MN's IP mobility management. It keeps track of MN's movement, and delivers the MN's packets to its current location. AWAG is an access router that is responsible for managing the traffic flows within the same local mobility domain. In EFLoM, when Corresponding Node (CN) and MN connect to the same local mobility domain, packets are sent directly between CN and MN by WAG, without suffering sub-optimal routing problems. A MN is a mobile host which updates its data packets' header with its current location address before packets are sent out. To evaluate our new framework, we compare EFLoM with Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 Mobility Management (HMIPv6) [4] which is an existing protocol that has good performance for local mobility. Both analytical analysis and simulation result show that EFLoM can attain substantial improvements over HMIPv6 in terms of handover delay, end to end delay, traffic overhead, which therefore presents EFLoM as a new engineering alternative to existing MIPv6 based techniques.