Editorial: Special Issue on “Advances in Mobile IPv6 and Network-Based Localized Mobility Management”

Abstract

Wireless mobile communications are rapidly becoming indispensable components of our life with the widespread use of portable devices. Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) has been recognized as a standard protocol that handles the mobility management and provides the seamless mobile communications. Moreover, it is expected that MIPv6 will open the Mobile Internet Age where uses can get online anywhere, anytime regardless on their movements. Despite such a potential, MIPv6 suffers from some problems such as long handover latency and high signaling overhead. As a result, novel approaches such as Fast-Handovers for MIPv6 (FMIPv6) and Hierarchical MIPv6 (HMIPv6) have been proposed. Recently, Proxy MIPv6 (PMIPv6) has gained significant attention due to its network-based localized mobility management (NETLMM), which allows mobile devices not to be involved in mobility management. The objective of this special issue is to bring together the researchers from academia and industry as well as practitioners to discuss the latest research advances in the area of MIPv6 and NETLMM. This special issue is composed of total eleven papers, some of which are extended from the outstanding papers presented at the 2nd International Workshop on Mobile IPv6 and Network-based Localized Mobility Management (MobiWorld 2010). They cover the recent technologies for wireless mobile communications. The issue starts with four papers addressing Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), which is a recent approach for IP mobility management. The paper “Enhancing QoS of Mobile Devices by a New Handover Process in PMIPv6 Networks” introduces a new handover process to further improve the handover performance of PMIPv6, while providing detailed numerical analysis in terms of handover latency, packet loss, and buffering cost. The paper “IP Flow Mobility in PMIPv6 Based Networks: Solution Design and Experimental Evaluation”