IP micro-mobility protocols

Abstract

Wireless cellular networks are quickly evolving toward broadband offering higher bandwidth. At the same time, these networks are also moving toward all-IP networks. In this article, we first describe the global mobility landscape for these future networks. This landscape is designed to be as generic as possible to allow us to compare several IP mobility management proposals with very different characteristics. We illustrate the utilization of this landscape with a short presentation of the IP-level mobility management in general packet radio service (GPRS) and Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) networks. We then point out and describe the important issues that must be addressed to manage mobile nodes. These issues include mainly handoff management, the support of passive connectivity and paging, scalability and robustness. Within this framework we examine mobile IP as a first IP mobility management protocol. We then present the well known distinction between macro-mobility and micro-mobility and the advantages of this approach. Finally, we compare seven of the recently proposed IP micro-mobility protocols: hierarchical mobile IP, proactive handoff, fast handoff, telecommunication-enhanced mobile IP architecture (TeleMIP), cellular IP, HAWAII, and Edge mobility architecture (EMA). We find that, while the micro-mobility protocols proposed thus far do address a number of interesting issues, more work remains to be done in order to arrive at a scalable, reliable solution.