Mobility Management Approach Research Articles

Efficient Mobility Management in Mobile Edge Computing Networks: Joint Handover and Service Migration

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has been envisioned as an essential technology for latency-critical applications by providing computing services in close proximity to mobile users. Bringing MEC to come into practice, how to support user mobility remains challenging. In addition to seeking a thorny trade-off between service latency and migration cost, both interactions in space and time exist in mobility management, which requires collaboration among users and perfect prior knowledge, including user mobility and network information. In this paper, we propose an efficient mobility management framework for MEC networks, in which mobility management is operated centered around users’ performance and cost, while radio access and computing service provision are loosely coupled. With a loosely coupled design, the proposed framework exhibits more flexibility and incurs higher complexity. Focusing on multi-user and multi-cell MEC networks, this joint control problem is formulated to maximize the long-term total utility accounting for the service delay and migration cost. Considering the exponential complexity, a distributed mobility management approach is developed, which combines game theory and user-oriented deep reinforcement learning to deal with the interactions in space and time. Simulation results show the efficiency and scalability of the proposed approach.

Awareness of user mobility in Named Data Networking for IoT traffic under the push communication mode

The current proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) mobile devices has helped to show the limitations of the IP model to support content-based applications and networking. Named Data Networking (NDN) appears to be more in line with the IoT framework and vision. However, NDN still lacks native integration of effective user mobility management to meet the requirements of various latency-sensitive applications such as real-time streaming and embraces the continued proliferation of smart phones and mobile devices.In this paper, we first propose to integrate a push communication model into NDN to better suit real time streaming applications. We propose the use of persistent interests (PI) to create a streaming like capability in NDN and significantly reduce the interests traffic within the network. Producer and consumer mobility handling for seamless and continuous data flows becomes a real challenging issue under the PI framework. We propose PIMM a radically new anchorless mobility management approach for NDN. PIMM integrates efficient mechanisms for the mobility of both producer and consumer, and sustains high mobility environments as well as requirements of latency sensitive applications.PIMM is implemented in the de facto NDN simulator (ndnSIM2.1), evaluated and benchmarked with existing NDN producer mobility management solutions. Simulations results clearly show the efficiency of PIMM and highlight its superiority in terms of handoff latency, data loss, and data delay jitter.

Comparative Analysis of Producer Mobility Management Approaches in Named Data Networking

Seamless management of producer mobility in named data networks (NDNs) has become an inherent requirement to satisfy the ever-increasing number of mobile user devices and the streaming of widespread real-time multimedia content. In this paper, we first classify the various producer mobility management (MM) schemes into four different approaches. Then, we select a representative scheme from each approach and conduct a comparative analysis between them to suggest the most suitable producer MM approach for a broad class of latency sensitive applications, such as video and audio streaming and broadcasting over NDNs. To assess and compare the efficiency and effectiveness of the representative schemes, we implemented them in the NDN defacto NdnSIM simulator and used the same network scenarios and mobility settings. The results show the superiority of the producer MM scheme that follows the data plane-based approach, which yielded lower data loss rates, lower data delivery delays and lower signaling overheads.

Network Mobility Management Challenges, Directions, and Solutions: An Architectural Perspective

Efficient mobility management solutions are essential to provide users with seamless connectivity and session continuity during movement. However, user mobility was not envisaged as one of the early Internet’s use cases due to the early adoption of destination based routing and the assumption that end-nodes are static. This has become a critical hinder for providing efficient mobility support. This paper presents the challenges, drivers, and solutions that aim to overcome the drawbacks of current mobility management approaches. Furthermore, it introduces a promising solution that builds on emerging path-based forwarding architectures that identify network links rather than end nodes. Delivery path information is stored inside the packet while forwarding is achieved by performing a simple set membership test rather than the current destination-based routing approach. Mobility management in these architectures simply requires partial recomputation of the delivery path allowing for efficient mobility support over an optimal path. Evaluation results show significant cost savings in terms of delivery paths and end-to-end packet delay when using a path forwarding architecture.

Exploring Software-Defined Network (SDN) for Seamless Handovers in Future Vehicular Networks

With the rapid development of communication technology, vehicular communications systems are evolving to Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) by providing its wireless network services with increasing demand for high data rate. However, the highly mobile feature of vehicles and varying network densities in such communication systems pose challenges for the mobility management, including frequent handovers, increased delay and failure of the handover process. In this work, we propose an optimized mobility management approach using Software-Defined Network (SDN) in the future vehicular networks. In addition, we have proposed a new handover management mechanism. This new mechanism allows vehicles to select the most optimal network based on multi-criteria metrics. The simulation results show that the proposed approach performs well and achieves an improvement in terms of handover delay and handover failure rate, compared to existing approach.

Mobility Management With Transferable Reinforcement Learning Trajectory Prediction

Future mobile networks will enable the massive deployment of mobile multimedia applications anytime and anywhere. In this context, mobility management schemes, such as handover and proactive multimedia service migration, will be essential to improve network performance. In this article, we propose a proactive mobility management approach based on group user trajectory prediction. Specifically, we introduce a mobile user trajectory prediction algorithm by combining the Long-Short Term Memory networks (LSTM) with Reinforcement Learning (RL) to automate the model training procedure. We further develop a group user trajectory predictor to reduce prediction calculation overheads of users with similar movement patterns. To validate the impact of the proposed mobility management approach, we present a virtual reality (VR) service migration scheme built on the top of the proactive handover mechanism that benefits from trajectory predictions. Experiment results validate our predictor's outstanding accuracy and its impacts on enhancing handover and service migration performance to provide quality of service assurance.

Heuristic Access Points Grouping for Mobility Driven User-Centric Ultra Dense Networks

In ultra-dense network (UDN) scenarios the big number of users and dense placement is comparable to those of the Access Points (APs). In such UDNs new approaches for mobility management are necessary to ensure a reliable service provision, seamless connectivity and high unit area throughput. Dynamic access point grouping for user service provision is considered to be a core function of the UDN with user centric wireless access. In this paper, a heuristic approach with low computational complexity for AP grouping for mobility driven user-centric UDN is proposed, based on two general metrics reflecting the user density and distribution, user requirements and available resources in the APs. This allows the AP grouping process and user association to one or a group of APs to be represented as a dynamic service provision system and its performance as a function of user allocation, user mobility and user service requests to be more effective.

Analytical and Experimental Evaluation of a Novel Mechanism to Improve the Control Plane in Next-Generation Mobile Networks

With the continuous development of mobile communications and the Internet of Things technology, the enhanced network performance can be seen as one of the major challenges in the fourth industrial revolution context, where new services and applications with strict performance requirements have emerged, such as driverless vehicles, smart cities, factories, and manufacturing, among others. These new services and applications also drive growth of the data traffic, which is increasing exponentially. Thus, in mobile network environments, industry and academia are proposing new mechanisms to overcome the traffic bottlenecks and reduce the signaling overhead that affects current networks. Centralized Mobility Management solutions are prone to several problems such as the aforementioned signaling overhead or scalability issues. To overcome these limitations, Distributed Mobility Management approaches are being considered. In this paper, an analytical cost model and experimental evaluation will be developed for evaluating the performance of the Distributed Mobility Management implementations. Furthermore, a new approach will be proposed to improve network performance.

Software Defined 5G and 6G Networks: a Survey

The current mobile communications could not satisfy the explosive data requirement of users. This paper reviews the frontier technology of software definition networks (SDN) of 5G and 6G, including system architecture, resource management, mobility management, interference management, challenges, and open issues. First of all, the system architectures of 5G and 6G mobile networks are introduced based on SDN technologies. Then typical SDN-5G/6G application scenarios and key issues are discussed. We also focus on mobility management approaches in mobile networks. Besides, three types of mobility management mechanism in software defined 5G/6G are described and compared. We then summarize the current interference management techniques in wireless cellular networks. Next, we provide a brief survey of interference management method in SDN-5G/6G. Additionally, considering the challenges, we discuss mm-Wave spectrum, un-availability of popular channel model, massive MIMO, low latency and QoE, energy efficiency, scalability, mobility and routing, inter operability, standardization and security for software defined 5G/6G networks.

Guidelines towards Information-Driven Mobility Management

The architectural semantics of Information-Centric Networking bring in interesting features in regards to mobility management: Information-Centric Networking is content-oriented, connection-less, and receiver-driven. Despite such intrinsic advantages, the support for node movement is being based on the principles of IP solutions. IP-based solutions are, however, host-oriented, and Information-Centric Networking paradigms are information-oriented. By following IP mobility management principles, some of the natural mobility support advantages of Information-Centric Networking are not being adequately explored. This paper contributes with an overview on how Information-Centric Networking paradigms handle mobility management as of today, highlighting current challenges and proposing a set of design guidelines to overcome them, thus steering a vision towards a content-centric mobility management approach.

Distributed mobility management with ID/locator split network-based for future 5G networks

The challenge to provide seamless mobility in the near future emerges as a key issue. By a brief analysis of the drawbacks of existing mobility management mechanisms, this paper presents the essential reasons why the traditional network model employing the IP protocol cannot provide mobility support for the end-host. This paper produces a distributed mobility management scheme with ID (identification)/locator split network-based, named IDN. It can provide more efficient mobility performance without Triangle Routing. By applying the IDN scheme to the legacy network, the hierarchy of the legacy network can be evolved into one layer ASN architecture instead of 2 layers. A mobility protocol performance analysis model is created, which is applied for a performance comparison between IDN scheme and the other existing mobility protocols. The simulation results show that the IDN scheme can save resources due to elimination of the Triangle Routing up to 18–64%. A qualitative comparison among those main existing network-based approaches is proposed, such as locator/ID separation protocol (LISP) and distributed mobility management (DMM) approaches. The four main weaknesses of host-based mobility management protocols can be overcame by the IDN scheme.

EECASC: an energy efficient communication approach in smart cities

The power consumption and connectivity of mobile nodes to the network are two essential issues in smart cities. In this paper, we have proposed a decentralized approach for mobility management of mobile nodes in smart cities. We propose a customized communication protocol compliant with 6LoWPAN along with the scheme that consumes less power regarding previous solutions. The proposed approach organizes static nodes as a tree for efficient routing, automatic addressing, and handling movement of mobile nodes. The proposed approach has a hybrid data transmission capability by proactively choosing multi-hop or single-hop routing to reduce power consumption of mobile nodes. It is evaluated based on different factors. The results show the superiority of the approach compared with the previous works. The promising analytical results manifest the higher performance (about 10% compared to the best scheme) of the proposed approach specifically in reducing the power consumption of mobile nodes.

DMPO: Dynamic mobility-aware partial offloading in mobile edge computing

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) brings computation closer to user equipment (UE) and reduces the latency as well as energy consumption for computation offloading. However, with the development of Ultra-Dense Network (UDN), traditional offloading algorithms and mobility management (MM) approaches are not sufficient anymore with a frequent handover between base stations. It becomes far from optimal to execute offloading algorithms only at the beginning of a task when UE moves frequently or in the environment of UDN. Also, simple dynamic adjustment for offloading proportion of data input during UE’s movement cannot solve this problem very well, because this approach executes global decision with information from only one position. Exploiting short-term mobility prediction in MM, we propose a novel dynamic mobility-aware partial offloading (DMPO) algorithm to figure out the amount of data for offloading dynamically, together with the decision of communication path in MM, minimizing the energy consumption while satisfying the delay constraint. This proposed algorithm predicts the time to next handover as well as the moving of UE in this phase and assigns data size to each time slot in this phase to achieve our goal of minimizing energy consumption while satisfying the delay constraint. In the simulation, we obverse the average delay and energy consumption with different delay constraint, moving speed of UE and base station density. The results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm saves up to 70% of energy while having a better performance in satisfying the delay constraint compared to traditional approaches.

Mobility management approaches for SDN-enabled mobile networks

The evolving network technologies aim at meeting the envisioned communication demands of future smart cities and applications. Although software-defined networking (SDN) enables flexible network control, its applicability to mobile networks is still in its infancy. When it comes to introducing the SDN vision to mobile networks, handling of wireless events and mobility management operations stand out as major challenges. In this paper, we study the scalability issues of SDNized wireless networks, specifically those relevant to mobility management. We design and implement different mobility management approaches in SDNized wireless networks and investigate the impact of various system variables on the overall handover delays. We also study the improvements in handover delays: (i) when a proposed proactive mobility management algorithm is implemented; (ii) when the controller delegates partial control of mobility management to the forwarding entities. For the implementation of the proposed approaches on the OpenFlow network, the paper also suggests potential extensions to the OpenFlow protocol. The contributed approaches are validated on a full-scale demonstrator, with results showing that proactive outperforms reactive and that the delegated control approach performs better than proactive for smaller topology sizes. Furthermore, a proposal for LTE X2-specific control delegation is discussed as a use case.

An Anonymous Authentication Scheme based on PMIPv6 for VANETs

With the rapid development of wireless network infrastructure and transportation industry, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have been paid more and more attention. Meanwhile, proxy mobile IPv6(PMIPv6), with its shorter handover delay and lower signaling overhead, is an ideal mobility management approach to exploit the advantages of VANETs. However, security issues become the main obstacle for the combination of PMIPv6 and VANETs. Unfortunately, most scholars’ research focus on the efficiency and security during access authentication of vehicle node, while ignoring the privacy issues which may cause great impact on mobile users. In this paper, we put forward an anonymous authentication scheme based on PMIPv6 for VANETs. The scheme is equipped with pseudonyms, identity-based cryptographic mechanisms, and several salient authentication protocols. According to the security and performance analysis, the proposed scheme owns higher security and efficiency compared with the typical ones.

Resource-based mobility management for video users in 5G using catalytic computing

The upcoming 5G era emphasizes on a dramatic increase in the transmission rate of smartphone traffic. With more users operating at high rates, the type of data shared over the network is going to be complex and a majority of it will include video traffic. Such complex structure of traffic and heavy load over the components of the network are difficult to control. Further, the mobility of users adds up to this issue and makes it difficult to manage and operate the network without any breakdown. Thus, it important to control traffic as well as manage the mobility of users to provide efficient communication, which can support video traffic at high delivery rates. This paper proposes a novel resource-based mobility management approach for 5G networks comprising video users. A novel resource sharing paradigm, termed as “Catalytic Computing”, provides efficient management of user mobility as well as network resources. The proposed approach relies on Homogeneous discrete Markov model for user mobility patterns and a novel n-step algorithm for congestion prediction and selection of optimal routes between the serving terminals. An activation energy based handover mechanism is also presented in this paper, which reduces the handover latency in comparison with the existing solutions. The evaluation presented in the paper suggests that the proposed approach provides a minimum of 5.9 ms, maximum of 9.1 ms and an average of 6.5 ms latency during handoffs.

A Mobility Solution for Hazardous Areas Based on 6LoWPAN

In a critical environment, e.g. in a factory where an employee faces hazardous conditions, monitoring the health status of the employee is important. Thus, continuous connectivity of the employee to the network is the main concern of such networks. In this paper, we have proposed a decentralized approach for mobility management of mobile nodes in hazardous areas like factory. The proposed mobility structure for hazardous areas, called MSHA, organizes static nodes as a tree for an efficient routing, automatic addressing, and handling movement of mobile nodes. MSHA is capable of handling multiple failures of static nodes which disconnect a mobile node from the network. MSHA is highly scalable regarding the number of mobile nodes and the size of the covered monitoring area. The proposed scheme is evaluated based on different factors. The results reveal the superiority of MSHA compared with the previous works. The promising analytical results manifest the performance (about 20%) of MSHA specifically in reducing packet loss and hand-off delay caused by the failure of the static nodes. The performance does not degrade with increasing the number of mobile nodes.

An integrated MIH-FPMIPv6 mobility management approach for evolved-packet system architectures

Following the Always Best Connection (ABC) principle of the 4th generation wireless networks users of mobile services would be provided with connectivity to the best access technology all the time. In such a context, mobile devices are equipped with multiple radio interfaces allowing connectivity to the most suitable network environment based on users’ requirements and operators' policies. Seamless vertical handover plays the key role for mobility across various access networks offering service continuity to users. The Evolved Packet core (EPC) network architecture of the 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) provides optimized mechanisms to achieve Vertical Handover (VHO) using the Fast Proxy Mobile IPv6 (FPMIPv6) mobility management standard. However the EPC solution fails to provide seamless handover for real time applications due to lack of information when the source and the target networks are on different domains as well as due to existing limitations in FPMIPv6. The IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) framework is another promising standard which facilitates the VHO procedures by providing generic interfaces and primitives independent of the access technology. In this paper a seamless handover solution is proposed between 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) and non-3GPP wireless access technologies which includes several signaling enhancements complementing the functionalities of the EPC network of the LTE-A with the IEEE 802.21 standard. Also an improved FPMIPv6 scheme is included, addressing the identified shortcomings of the protocol. The presented architecture provides low latencies, supporting services QoS constraints, as well as user requirements and provider policies. The proposed framework is compared with the existing EPC approach while a comparative analysis and evaluation of the enhanced FPMIPv6 is provided.

Mobility management: Deployment and adaptability aspects through mobile data traffic analysis

The expected boost in mobile data traffic and the evolution towards the next generation of networks are making cellular operators reconsider whether current approaches for handling mobility could be improved, according to the characteristics of the mobile traffic that actually flows through real networks. In this work, we make use of extensive analysis of real network traces to infer the main characteristics of mobile data traffic for a particular operator. Our analysis focuses on the features related to mobility, i.e., location information, number of handovers, or duration of the data traffic exchange. New techniques to gather the mobility characteristics of the user based on data and control packets correlation are designed and applied to compare the gains of deploying different mobility management approaches. We show that adapting the mobility management mechanism to the degree of mobility and the network characteristics brings some benefits to the network operator over the current approach, especially in scenarios of low mobility, where a dstributed mobility management solution proves to be more efficient.

Design and performance evaluation of distributed mobility management schemes for network mobility

Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) is a current alternative paradigm for developing IP mobility management schemes to address the centralised mobility management problems in existing IP mobility management schemes. This is to allow these schemes to cope with the current increase in the number of mobile users and mobile data traffic volume, as well as the trend in the mobile Internet towards a flat architecture. To date, schemes׳ development based on DMM approach is still at preliminary stages in the IETF, and there is no current standard in place. In this paper, we develop network-based DMM schemes for the Network Mobility (NEMO). The schemes are developed for non-nested and nested NEMO scenarios – with the goal of mitigating the sub-optimal routing, high packet overhead and packet delivery latency, especially in a nested NEMO scenario, due to the employment of a centralized mobility management approach in NEMO. Additionally, the proposed scheme improves the packet delivery and location update (i.e., binding update) costs. The paper presents in detail the schemes’ design, operation mechanism, and the performance evaluation (through analytical and simulation in ns-2). Both the analytical and simulation results show that the proposed schemes yield a significant improvement – in terms of reducing packet overhead and packet delivery latency, as well as binding update and packet delivery costs.