Fast Handoff Scheme Using Location Information

Abstract

Frequent handoffs in mobile IP scheme increase latency and loss of packets. Hierarchical mobility management has been introduced to reduce the impact of mobility by handling local movements locally and hiding them from Home Agent. In this paper we propose a low Latency handoff scheme using location information that can reduce the handoff latency and packet loss. Every foreign agent will contain the location of their foreign agent’s neighbors, and can detect the movement and the direction of the mobile host. The mobile host periodically informs its serving foreign agent of its location. The current foreign agent can know the distance between foreign agent and mobile host. Handoff latency is minimized by initiating data forwarding to the new foreign agent at the time that the mobile host becomes close to the threshold value based on the coverage area of the foreign agent. We show through simulations that the use of the proactive scheme with location information in the foreign agent allows for accomplishing Fast Handoff and reduced packet loss. Simulations results show that our scheme is more efficient other scheme, in term of packet loss and handoff delay.