Development of Mobile Access Point for Vehicular WiBro Networks

Abstract

This paper proposes the architecture of the mobile access point (AP) for vehicular WiBro (Wireless Broadband) Networks and describes the development result. The proposed mobile AP organizes a moving network inside a vehicle for passengers and devices to access Internet while the vehicle moves. The mobile AP implements following properties: Network Mobility (NEMO), IPv6 over WiBro, and Multihoming. NEMO enables the mobile WiBro AP to aggregate mobility management of the devices inside the vehicle. The NEMO Basic Support protocol is based on the Mobile IPv6 protocol to support vast address space for a lot of devices inside a vehicle. Therefore we also implemented the technology which adapts IPv6 over WiBro to enable IPv6 network mobility protocol to operate over WiBro. In addition, multihoming is deployed to provide connection to multiple access networks. The development result shows that the devices behind the mobile AP maintain the Internet connectivity while the mobility of the vehicle is transparent to them. We verified our development by an experiment of real-time streaming performance over networked camera and PCs behind the mobile AP. It shows the feasibility of the proposed architecture that passengers and devices in moving space, e.g., vehicles, are able to communicate over WiBro without managing mobility as if they connect to the Internet at stationary place, e.g., home or office.