Inter-technology Handover Research Articles

ORCHESTRA: Supercharging Wireless Backhaul Networks Through Multi-technology Management

Today’s and tomorrow’s networks are becoming increasingly complex and heterogeneous with a large diversity of devices and technologies. To meet growing demand, and support client mobility there is need for intelligent mechanisms like multi-technology load balancing and handovers. Current solutions, like Multipath Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP), fail to provide a fine-grained, coordinated, and transparent answer to this heterogeneity, while the lower layers of the Open Systems Interconnection stack simply ignore it by providing full separation of layers. Therefore, we introduce ORCHESTRA, a data link layer framework for the management of multi-technology networks and devices, enabling packet-level dynamic handovers, load balancing, and duplication across network technologies. The framework is the first of its kind in providing fine-grained packet-level control across different technologies in a network-wide manner. Moreover, it works on top of existing standards without the need for hardware changes. This is achieved through a fully transparent virtual Medium Access Control layer and a Software-Defined Networking controller with global intelligence. The framework is implemented in a prototype running on off-the-shelf hardware and we demonstrate its features across different IEEE 802.11 technologies and 4G (Long Term Evolution). We demonstrate that ORCHESTRA outperforms MPTCP and allows for real-time inter-technology handovers and that overall throughput and reliability are improved in wireless networks.

ORCHESTRA: Enabling Inter-Technology Network Management in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Modern connected devices are equipped with the ability to connect to the Internet using a variety of different wireless network technologies. Current network management solutions fail to provide a fine-grained, coordinated, and transparent answer to this heterogeneity, while the lower layers of the OSI stack simply ignore it by providing full separation of layers. To address this, we propose the ORCHESTRA framework to manage the different devices in heterogeneous wireless networks and introduce capabilities such as packet-level dynamic and intelligent handovers (both inter- and intra-technology), load balancing, replication, and scheduling. The framework is the first of its kind in providing a fine-grained packet-level control across different technologies by introducing a fully transparent virtual medium access control layer and an software-defined networking-like controller with global intelligence. Furthermore, we present a novel optimization problem formulation that can be solved to optimally configure the network. We provide a thorough evaluation through simulations and a prototype implementation. We show that our framework enables, in a real-life setting, transparent and real-time inter-technology handovers and that coordinated load balancing can double the network-wide throughput across different scenarios.

Performance Improvement of Proxy Mobile IPv6 for the Support of Multi-homing

Nowadays the mobile communication is developing vigorously. In the modern context this is known as the Next Generation of Communication. The Mobile Node (MN) plays a vital role in the mobile communication. There are two types of mobility management protocols. One is host-based mobility management protocol and the other is network-based mobility management protocol. The host-based mobility management protocol requires MN participation during communication. More over it also decreases the ability of mobile communication. Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) overcomes this problem. PMIPv6 is a network mobility management protocol. During communication, it does not require any MN participation. The inter-technology handover or flow mobility can performed in PMIPv6 with the help of Virtual Interface (VI). In the VI, the Link Layer Identifier (LL-ID) is used to identify the network interface which is used for the communication of data link layer. The main task of these VIs is to maintain the secrecy of the Physical Interface (PI). The VI has the capability to maintain the secret of the PI movement, by using the same LL-ID if it is in the same technology (e.g. IEEE 802.11). Unfortunately, this approach cannot support more than one interface, i.e. it cannot swap its address for more than one interface. This is the main problem of single VI, and it is represented as swapping problem. However, PMIPv6 Network mobility management protocol does not supported multi-homing due to swapping problem. The PMIPv6 has single Interface mechanism. This single interface develops swapping problems. Due to single interface, it is difficult to identify LL_ID which supports multi-homing. When more than one interface involve, the existing technique of PMIPv6 does not provide support for forwarding packets. This paper focuses on how an efficient PMIPv6 along with Multiple Virtual Interface (MVI) supports multi-homing. This paper focuses on how an efficient PMIPv6 along with MVI supports multi-homing. It is achieved by using additional fields ‘I’ & ‘A’ as supplements in the handover frame format of F-PMIPv6. In this work, the new fields ‘I’ & ‘A’ are represented as Supplementary Advertisement of Neighbor Discovery (SAND). The proposed system result of this paper achieved both by theoretically and experimentally. Here, the simulation is done by through the Network Simulator-3.

Towards seamless inter-technology handovers in vehicular IPv6 communications

Network mobility plays an important role in communications when using different access networks while maintaining application sessions. This is the case of vehicular networks used by the emerging Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS), where vehicles are constantly moving, changing their access network. Standardization bodies like IETF, and particular proposals in the literature, have already defined mobility mechanisms by using widely used Internet technologies. The usefulness of these mechanisms in vehicular networks is clear when using IPv6, however, its performance suffer from the high mobility of nodes, the fluctuating performance of communication technologies, and the need for a decision mechanism to choose a proper attachment point among the available access networks on roads. For this reason, here we propose an instantiation of the ISO/ETSI reference architecture for vehicular cooperative systems, by deploying a real vehicular network based on IPv6, as well as a mobility service provided by Network Mobility Basic Support (NEMO) and the Multiple Care of Addresses Registration (MCoA) extension. This mobility solution is embedded into a framework that integrates the IEEE 802.21 technology, which provides a greater control over the handover process. The resulting architecture not only provides a seamless handover but also supports the decision making when searching for the most suitable target network. Our experiments reveal that our combined NEMO/MCoA/802.21 system within a vehicular communication stack is able to provide uninterrupted communications during handovers with a dramatic reduction in the time needed by this process.

Experimental analysis of connectivity management in mobile operating systems

We are immerse in a world that becomes more and more mobile every day, with ubiquitous connectivity and increasing demand for mobile services. Current mobile terminals support several access technologies, enabling users to gain connectivity in a plethora of scenarios and favoring their mobility. However, the management of network connectivity using multiple interfaces is still starting to be deployed. The lack of smart connectivity management in multi-interface devices forces applications to be explicitly aware of the variations in the connectivity state (changes in active interface, simultaneous access from several interfaces, etc.). In this paper, we analyze the present state of the connection management and handover capabilities in the three major mobile operating systems (OSes): Android, iOS and Windows. To this aim, we conduct a thorough experimental study on the connectivity management of each operating system, including several versions of the OS on different mobile terminals, analyzing the differences and similarities between them. Moreover, in order to assess how mobility is handled and how this can affect the final user, we perform an exhaustive experimental analysis on application behavior in intra- and inter-technology handover. Based on this experience, we identify open issues in the smartphone connectivity management policies and implementations, highlighting easy to deploy yet unimplemented improvements, as well as potential integration of mobility protocols.

Multiple Virtual Interfaces for Multi-homing Hosts to Support Inter-technology Handover in PMIPv6 Network

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), a network-based mobility management protocol, supports multi-homing, inter-technology handover, and flow mobility, with the help of a host's virtual interface (VI). Several single virtual interface (SVI) schemes have been proposed to support these functions. In the SVI schemes, the link-layer identifier (LL-ID) should be swapped while the host is processing neighbor discovery (ND) after inter-technology handover or flow mobility. That is, a host must replace the LL-ID of a VI contained in a neighbor advertisement with the LL-ID of a physical interface (PI) related to a real connection. Such LL-ID swapping cannot be executed under secure neighbor discovery, and it causes ND processing delay and high overhead to check all outgoing packets. In this paper, we propose a multiple virtual interfaces scheme to solve the problem related to the LL-ID swapping, and to provide good support to the inter-technology handover. In the proposed scheme, there are the same numbers of VIs as the PIs between the data link layer and the network layer of a host. Since each VI maintains its own neighbor cache, the proposed scheme does not require LL-ID swapping, so that it can keep the standard ND process. We explain the basic operation of PMIPv6 inter-technology handover under the proposed scheme and, through NS-3 simulation, evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of ND process delay and inter-technology handover latency.

Exploiting mobility patterns for inter-technology handover in mobile environments

Mobile terminals with multi-radio devices have become increasingly prevalent. This makes it possible for Internet applications to be supported by heterogeneous wireless networks while the terminal is on the move. As the user is constantly moving, it is highly desirable that the terminal connects to the best network and retains high performance of network connections. Handovers can be made within the same type of network (horizontal handover) or different types of networks (vertical handover). This paper focuses on link-layer inter-technology vertical handovers. Vertical handovers present several great challenges, such as user mobility randomness, high handover overhead and optimality requirement. Existing work often focuses only on the current network condition when making handover decisions, ignoring future performance of the terminal. As a result, a handover decision good for the current moment may soon become poor when the user moves to another place. This paper is motivated by the observation that users in a given mobile environment, such as university or enterprise campus, exhibit clear mobility patterns. We propose an approach for making handover decisions, which explicitly exploits user mobility patterns. This approach can produce high-performance handover decisions in the long run. Employing a comprehensive framework for preference customization, the approach supports user customization caring for different user preferences. Extensive real trace driven simulations and comparative study show our algorithm is better than the conventional vertical handover algorithms.

PMIPv6 도메인에서 플로우 이동성 지원을 위한 논리인터페이스 기반 HNP 변환 기법

Recently, wireless multi-networking technology has been studied for supporting multi-interface in mobile node. As the related work, in the IETF NetExt WG, the extension of Proxy Mobile IPv6 protocol for supporting flow mobility is actively on going in discussion. PMIPv6 protocol supports simultaneous access through the multi-interface in a mobile node and inter-technology handover between multiple interfaces. However, this protocol can not support flow mobility. Thus, in this paper, when a mobile node connects to PMIPv6 domain through multi-interface, as a way to support flow mobility, the design of logical interface and Home Network Prefix change scheme based on logical interface are proposed, We show that the proposed scheme can perform flow mobility service without end-to-end disconnection in PMIPv6 domain.

Proxy MIPv6 도메인에서 Inter-Technology Handover 제공을 위한 Hybrid Home Network Prefix 모델

Recently, with the popularity of smartphones, an interest in multi-networking service through wireless multi-interface of a mobile node is increased. Also, wireless networking technology for using wireless multi-interface has been studied. As the related work, in the IETF Netext WG, the extension of PMIPv6 protocol for multi-interface support is being discussed. Existing PMIPv6 protocol includes the functions for simultaneous access over multi-interfaces of a mobile node and inter-technology handover between multi-interfaces of the mobile node. However, in case of the existing protocol, the problem occurs when inter-technology handover is performed after simultaneous access on the PMIPv6 domain, this problem is the discontinuous of simultaneous connections. Therefore, the PMIPv6 Protocol cannot support flow based multi-homing service. In this paper, as a way to solve the problem, Hybrid Home Network Prefix scheme is proposed.

Next generation mobility management

Recently, wireless and mobile communication networks have become increasingly popular and the huge number of smart mobile devices and applications has brought the mobile operators with challenges from various aspects. This trend will continue to affect the way in which we live, work, and play with many smart and innovative services, and the intensive mobility control messages and data will give great impact on the traditional wireless and mobile communication networks. For this reason, the mobility management support is one of very important issues for the future generation of wireless and mobile networks and services, and the design of efficient and robust mobility management is one of the most challenging research tasks. Observing the great need for an in-depth research of the mobility management in both academia and industry, we have put together this special issue through an open call for papers. More than 10 high-quality papers from all around the world were submitted. Although many of them were of high quality, we had room for only three papers that best fit the theme. To guarantee higher quality of this special issue, we also have selectively collected four expanded papers from the proceedings of MobiWorld 2008 workshop while inviting two comprehensive surveys. Accordingly, this special issue brings together nine papers. The first two papers are devoted to review and survey recent developments and methods of mobility management, and the others propose and analyze some of the most interesting and innovative solutions dealing with the mobility management in wireless mobile networks. The paper “Next generation mobility management: an introduction” by F. Richard Yu, Vincent W. S. Wong, JooHan Song, Victor C. M. Leung, and Henry C. B. Chan reviews recent research trend and developments in location management, and surveys methods for inter-system handover management between heterogeneous systems. It classifies the inter-system handover management schemes according to the protocol layer, so that the readers can gain in-depth insight into the topic. It also provides open problems and research direction for the next negation mobility management. Recently, communication devices are being installed in more and more vehicles and roadside infrastructure. In the near future, traveling vehicles will be able to communicate while forming rapidly changing ad hoc networks. The paper “Mobility and Handoff Management in Vehicular Networks: A Survey” by Kun Zhu, Dusit Niyato, Ping Wang, Ekram Hossain, and Dong In Kim presents a good comprehensive survey on existing mobility management works for both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicleto-infrastructure communications in vehicular networks, and also provides several open research issues of the topic. The following four papers refer to the proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) which is a famous mobility management protocol recently standardized by IETF. PMIPv6 is a representative network-based localized mobility management protocol and has been of great interest to both academia and industry. Unlike host-based IP mobility management protocols, PMIPv6 does not require the participation of mobile nodes in mobility signaling. The paper “Implementation and analysis of proxy MIPv6” by Jianfeng Guan, Huachun Zhou, Zhiwei Yan, Yajuan Qin, and Hongke Zhang analyzes the singling cost of PMIPv6, provides their test-bed implement to evaluate its performance, and shows that its performance is better than the other mobility management protocols. The paper “Smart Buffering for seamless handover in Proxy Mobile IPv6” by Hyon-Young Choi, Kwang-Ryoul Kim, Hyo-Beom Lee, Sung-Gi Min, and Youn-Hee Han presents a PMIPv6 buffering scheme using only network-side information to prevent packet loss by proactively buffering packets that will be lost during handover, and also provides redundant packet elimination and packet reordering methods to minimize duplicate packet delivery and disruption of connection-oriented data flows. The paper “The applicability of virtual interface for intertechnology handovers in Proxy Mobile IPv6” by Ryuji Wakikawa, Sawako Kiriyama, and Sri Gundavelli analyzes the required software function on the mobile node for performing inter-technology handovers and investigates the applicability of virtual interface support available in Linux for implementing the PMIPv6-based inter-technology handover. The paper “QoS aware dynamic route optimization for Proxy Mobile IPv6 networks” by A. Dev Pragad, Vasilis Friderikos, Paul Pangalos, and A. Hamid Aghvami provides a QoS aware dynamic route optimization scheme where the network identifies the lower QoS sessions, and establishes a binding update with the correspondent node (CN) rather than with the LMA. The paper “A Cross-Layer Partner-Assisted Handoff Scheme for Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 in IEEE 802.16e Systems” by Yuh-Shyan Chen and Kun-Lin Wu presents a new partner-assisted handoff mechanism based on cross-layer approach by the combination of layer 2 and layer 3 in hierarchical mobile IPv6 which is a protocol standardized by IETF. The paper “Soft handoff support for SIP-NEMO: design, implementation, and performance evaluation” by

Media-independent pre-authentication supporting secure interdomain handover optimization

Handovers may cause delays and packet losses that affect real-time communication performance. Mobility protocols at several layers are designed to support handover, but they need to be optimized to ensure high-quality application performance. Existing optimization techniques are not sufficient to take care of interdomain and intertechnology handovers involving different access technologies, such as Wi-Fi, GSM, CDMA, and WiMAX. We categorize several types of handover, describe handover delay components, and propose a handover optimization framework called media independent pre-authentication that can provide optimizations for interdomain and intertechnology handover in a manner that is transparent to mobility management protocols. In addition, we also present experimental results demonstrating that this framework can achieve a significant reduction in handover delays for both network-layer and application-layer mobility management protocols.

Media-independent handover for seamless service provision in heterogeneous networks

The performance of current Internet applications is based mainly on the capabilities of the underlying network technologies. Modern access systems usually can satisfy delay, loss, or bandwidth requirements; however, design inconsistencies can lead to service degradation as the terminals move across different systems. In this article, the focal point is the satisfaction of service requirements during mobility and more specifically, how the emerging IEEE 802.21 standard enables seamless, inter-technology handover. Based on prior work and a well-known example of seamless mobility, the main seamless mobility principles are identified and used as the basis for further evaluating the potential of the IEEE 802.21 standard to meet the requirements of applications for minimum disruption during an inter-technology handover.

MIPv6 experimental evaluation using overlay networks

The commercial deployment of Mobile IPv6 has been hastened by the concepts of Integrated Wireless Networks and Overlay Networks, which are present in the notion of the forthcoming generation of wireless communications. Individual wireless access networks show limitations that can be overcome through the integration of different technologies into a single unified platform (i.e., 4G systems). This paper summarises practical experiments performed to evaluate the impact of inter-networking (i.e. vertical handovers) on the network and transport layers. Based on our observations, we propose and evaluate a number of inter-technology handover optimisation techniques, e.g., Router Advertisements frequency values, Binding Update simulcasting, Router Advertisements caching, and Soft Handovers. The paper concludes with the description of a policy-based mobility support middleware (PROTON) that hides 4G networking complexities from mobile users, provides informed handover-related decisions, and enables the application of different vertical handover methods and optimisations according to context.