Effective Performance Compensation for the Premature Handoff Trigger in FMIPv6 Networks

Abstract

Handoff trigger in Fast Handoff for Mobile IPv6 commonly use the underlying link-layer (L2) events to make effective handoff decisions. Ideally, with the timely L2 trigger invoking the handoff protocols of upper layer, the specified handoff procedures can be fully accomplished before terminating the current access link for enhancing the network performance. Firing the L2 trigger however is not always preferable owing to the irregular mobility profile acted by the mobile terminals. The premature L2 trigger leads to the unnecessary handoff with serious performance loss and resources waste. To address this issue, a performance compensation scheme for the premature handoff trigger (PC-PHT) is proposed, where the IP prefix in the Router Acknowledgement messages received by the mobile node within a defined time frame after the L2 trigger are firstly analyzed to promptly determine the premature trigger, and then a set of specific performance compensation measures are developed to accelerate the process of re-accessing into the previous served subnet. The simulations conducted on Network Simulator platform indicate that PC-PHT outperforms the compared schemes in the case that the L2 trigger does not correspond to an actual handoff by promptly determining the premature trigger, accelerating the re-accessing process and partially eliminating the performance loss.