Mobile IP Protocol Research Articles

Performance analysis of the Cellular IP mobility protocol

The search for a suitable micromobility protocol which will inter-work with Mobile IP in 3G mobile networks has been the subject of intense research. Several proposals have been analyzed and comparisons carried out [1]. Cellular IP is a strong contender to take the seat as the chosen micromobility protocol, and its performance has been characterized mainly with Columbia IP Micromobility Software (CIPMS) under diverse scenarios. Previous analyses have considered generic TCP and UDP traffic. In the work presented here, a Cellular IP based 3G network model is developed, and services (voice, and web) are represented after probabilistic behaviors to conform, respectively, to a GSM coder, and web content comprised of packets, objects, and pages. In this way a more accurate knowledge of Cellular IP performance can be obtained.

A novel scheme for mobility management in heterogeneous wireless networks

In this paper, we present a mobility management scheme for real-time multimedia sessions over heterogeneous wireless networks. Most approaches in the current literature use Mobile IP (MIP) or Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to maintain real-time sessions during mobility. In this paper, we analyze MIP and SIP in terms of the mobility rate, packet loss and packet overheads in the user plane and propose a mechanism by which the network can choose the optimum protocol for mobility management. We perform the analysis for constant bit rate (CBR) as well as for variable bit rate (VBR) traffic. We show that for CBR traffic, the proposed mechanism leads to 12---35% improvement in the system capacity, while for VBR traffic, capacity improvements ranging from about 35---50% can be obtained. Our proposed approach and the analysis are applicable to handovers between different IP domains both in homogeneous as well as in heterogeneous wireless networks.

An Empirical Analysis of Handoff Performance for SIP, Mobile IP, and SCTP Protocols

Over the last decade, we have witnessed a growing interest in the design and deployment of various network architectures and protocols aimed at supporting mobile users as they move across different...

Priority forwarding for improving the TCP performance in mobile IP based networks with packet buffering

Packet losses during the handoff operation by the route optimization extension of the Mobile IP causes performance degradation at the transmission control protocol (TCP). To prevent such degradation a number of packet buffering based methods have been proposed in the literature. However, as the mobile host user continually changes location and can sometimes move into a congested BS in a new foreign subnetwork, its buffered packets are likely to be dropped at the new BS. This can lead to losses at the TCP connections of the mobile user host in the new subnetwork, as well as at the TCP connections of the new BS which experiences severe performance degradation due to the abrupt increase in congestion by the forwarded burst of packets (i.e., global synchronization). This paper proposes a priority forwarding (PF) scheme designed to significantly improve the performance of the packet buffering methods. The proposed PF scheme does not require any modification to the Mobile IP protocol with route optimization extension. The simulation results show that by using the PF scheme the period of global synchronization at the inter-subnetwork handoff is made shorter due to the reduction in packet droppings in the random early detection (RED) buffer. This improves the TCP performance in wireless networks employing Mobile IP with packet buffering.

A survey of integrating IP mobility protocols and mobile ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is an infrastructureless, autonomous, and standalone network. A MANET can be flexibly and simply deployed in almost any environment, but it has limited wireless coverage and its connectivity is limited to the MANET boundary. The growth of the Internet and its services and applications - and the trend in the fourth generation (4G) wireless networks toward All-IP networks - have led to an increasing demand for enabling MANET nodes to connect to the Internet and use its services and applications. Mobile IP and IP micromobility protocols enable a mobile node to access the Internet and change its access point without losing the connection. The mobile node should be in the coverage range of the access point and should have a direct connection to it. So, with the cooperation between MANET routing protocols and the IP mobility protocol, Internet connectivity to MANET nodes can be achieved. Many solutions have been proposed to enable MANETs to connect to the Internet using IP mobility protocols. This article presents a survey of solutions for integrating MANETs with the Internet, with the intent of serving as a quick reference to current research proposals for Internet connectivity for mobile ad hoc networks based on IP mobility protocols. A qualitative comparison of the routing solutions for integration is presented. The limitations of these integration solutions are also investigated. A framework for integrating the Cellular IP access network and MANETs is introduced. This survey concludes with further points for investigation.

DIP-MIP: Distributed individual paging extension for mobile IP in IP-based cellular networks

The mobility-enabling protocol Mobile IP supports location registration but not paging. However, current cellular networks use registration as well as paging procedures to minimize signaling cost. Accordingly, an extension to Mobile IP using distributed individual paging, the so-called DIP-MIP, is proposed. In DIP-MIP, each mobile host derives its own paging area size by optimizing a signaling cost function based on its individual mobility pattern. The cost function itself may use either of two mobility models – fluid flow and random walk – and the performance of DIP-MIP is analyzed for both. The impact of various parameters on the DIP-MIP signaling cost is studied as well. The performance of DIP-MIP is shown to be superior to that of Mobile IP (MIP) in reducing signaling load, managing mobility and supporting a large number of mobile users in IP-based cellular networks.

Mobility management architectures based on joint mobile IP and SIP protocols

In the all-IP wireless networks beyond the third generation, mobility management can be effectively achieved by applying mobile IP (MIP) and the session initiation protocol (SIP) jointly. Nevertheless, an efficient combination of both protocols remains an open research issue. Conventional hybrid MIP-SIP mobility architectures operate MIP and SIP almost independently, resulting in significant redundant costs. This article investigates the representative hybrid MIP-SIP architectures and explores the joint optimizations between MIP and SIP for a more cost-efficient mobility support whilst utilizing their complementary power. Two novel design approaches are presented. The first approach culminates in a tightly integrated architecture, which merges the redundant mobility entities in MIP and SIP to yield maximum system efficiency. The other approach leads to a loosely integrated architecture, where necessary interactions are introduced between MIP and SIP mobility servers while their physical entities are kept intact. Major mobility procedures, including location update, session setup and handoff, are discussed in these architectures. The analytical results demonstrate that both proposed architectures outperform typical hybrid MIP-SIP architectures in terms of clear-cut reduced signaling costs

IP based Seamless Mobility Support in Heterogeneous Networks – Evaluation of Handover Mechanisms for Future Heterogeneous 3GPP Networks (IP basierte nahtlose Mobilitätsunterstützung in heterogenen Netzwerken – Evaluierung von Handover-Mechanismen für zukünftige heterogene 3GPP Netzwerke)

Mobile IP (MIP) protocols are candidates for seamless mobility support in heterogeneous networks with different radio access technologies. Handover requirements are analysed by Random-Way-Point mobility simulations. We then simulated packet loss, delay and network load during MIP and Fast MIP handover to identify the main contributions to handover latency. Best performance is found for MIP in Make-Before-Break scenario.

Simultaneous mobility: analytical framework, theorems and solutions

AbstractThe original Mobile IP (MIP) protocol does not perform Route Optimisation but uses Home Agents to forward traffic. Thus, it does not have problems with simultaneous mobility, that is, the special case when both end hosts are mobile and move at about the same time. However, MIP for IPv6 (MIPv6) uses binding updates that are sent directly to a correspondent node. Session Initiation Protocol based mobility management (SIPMM) and MIP with location registers (MIP‐LR) also use direct binding updates between a mobile host and a correspondent node. Thus, MIPv6, MIP‐LR and SIPMM are vulnerable to the simultaneous mobility problem. In this paper, we analyse the simultaneous mobility problem and solution mechanisms, and propose new ways for MIPv6, MIP‐LR and SIPMM to handle simultaneous mobility. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A survey of current architectures for connecting wireless mobile ad hoc networks to the Internet

AbstractConnecting wired and wireless networks, and particularly mobile wireless ad hoc networks (MANETs) and the global Internet, is attractive in real‐world scenarios due to its usefulness and praticality. Because of the various architectural mismatches between the Internet and MANETs with regard to their communication topology, routing protocols, and operation, it is necessary to introduce a hybrid interface capable of connecting to the Internet using Mobile IP protocol and to MANETs owing to an ad hoc routing protocol. Specifically, the approaches available in the literature have introduced updated versions of Mobile IP agents or access points at the edge of the Internet to help MANET nodes get multi‐hop wireless Internet access. The main differences in the existing approaches concern the type of ad hoc routing protocol as well as the switching algorithm used by MANET nodes to change their current Mobile IP agents based on specific switching criteria. This paper surveys a variety of approaches to providing multi‐hop wireless Internet access to MANET nodes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fault tolerance for home agents in mobile IP

In the conventional IP protocol, whenever a mobile device moves to a different network, it must change its IP address to communicate with other nodes in the Internet. Mobile IP protocol keeps mobile nodes online without changing their IP addresses while changing the attachment points. The packets destined to mobile nodes (MN) are relayed by their home agents (HA). However, once the only one HA fails, all MNs managed by the HA will not receive packets normally. In the paper, we propose a novel protocol with multiple mobile agents (MA) where only double mobility bindings are maintained in the whole system. When an HA is failed, its backup HA can take over it in a short time without fetching the bindings from other places. Besides, we also consider the load balancing between these HAs during HA takeover and recovery. Through the simulation and analyses, we found that our method has less registration overheads, better MN-scalability, less sensitivity on MN mobility, more fault-tolerance robustness, and less takeover time than others.

Mobility management support and performance analysis for wireless MPLS networks

AbstractMulti‐Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) is deployed in the Internet backbone to support service differentiation and traffic engineering. In recent years, there has been interest in extending the MPLS capability to wireless access networks for mobility management support. In this paper, we present analysis of Micro Mobile MPLS, a new micro‐mobility management scheme which integrates the Mobile IP and MPLS protocols by using two‐level hierarchy architecture. Our proposal supports two protocol variants. First, the fast handoff process, which anticipates the LSP procedure set‐up with neighboring locations where a mobile node (MN) may move to, is provided to reduce service disruption. Second, a new mechanism based on the forwarding chain concept is proposed to track efficiently the host mobility within a domain. This concept can significantly reduce registration update costs and provide low handoff latency. Analytical models are developed and simulations are conducted to justify the benefits of our proposed mechanisms. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Signalling analysis of cost‐efficient mobility support by integrating mobile IP and SIP in all IP wireless networks

AbstractNext‐generation wireless systems are expected to support efficient IP‐based terminal and personal mobility. Novel mobility‐support architecture called integrated MIP–SIP is designed based on the integration of mobile IP (MIP) and session initiation protocol (SIP), which dynamically combines and leverages the advantages of both protocols in a cost‐effective way. The design motivation and methodology is to make full use of standardized work from both protocols, select composite processes that are more efficient for common functions, integrate similar entities and procedures to reduce redundancies, and avoid further duplicate standardization. By these means, the system efficiency can be greatly improved. The essential mobility procedures presented are applicable to both MIPv4 and MIPv6, though IPv6 is focused on. Both analytical and simulation results show that the proposed architecture outperforms existing hybrid MIP–SIP and pure SIP mobility approaches in terms of a clear‐cut reduction in mobility signalling loads, which is crucial to the resource management in wireless networks. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Using group mobility and multihomed mobile gateways to connect mobilead hoc networks to the global IP Internet

Connecting multihop mobile ad hoc wireless networks (MANETs) to the Internet would enable MANET nodes to share wireless Internet access with mobile hosts that are one-hop away from their foreign networks. The integration of MANETs and the global Internet, however, faces an obstacle due to their network architectural mismatches regarding their infrastructure, topology, and mobility management mechanisms. Solutions to the integration problem should introduce an intermediate facility with hybrid mechanism, enabling it to connect to both networks. The quality of the multihop wireless Internet access service provided to MANET nodes depends on the design quality of this facility in order for MANET nodes to enjoy their Internet connectivity anywhere and anytime without much disconnections. In this paper, we propose hierarchical architecture that uses group mobility and multihomed mobile gateways, and present and analyse different simulations results. A multihomed mobile gateway can simultaneously connect to multiple Mobile IP foreign agents, provided it is located within their overlapping coverage area. It runs updated versions of the destination-sequenced distance vector (DSDV) and Mobile IP protocols, and is responsible for providing MANET nodes with wireless Internet access though they are multiple wireless hops away from the edge of the Internet. The rationale behind using multihoming is to increase reliability of the Internet access service and enhance performance of the integrated network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mobile multimedia supports with hierarchical multicast SIP framework on heterogeneous wireless networks

For supporting the mobile host (MH) to be the multicast receivers on wireless networks, the traditional approaches such as the Hierarchical Remote Subscription (HRS) and Bi-directional Tunneling with Mobile Multicast (BT-MoM) integrate the Mobile IP protocol with the IP multicast technique. However, they inherit intrinsic problems to handle mobility and suffer significant delays to rebuild the multicast tree when the MH moves out of the multicast tree, which results in serious playback interruption and quality of service (QoS) degradation for the ongoing multimedia service especially when the MH are scattered over different kinds of wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer framework and the Hierarchical Multicast Session Initiation Protocol (HMSIP), which extend the IETF Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) with the concept of multicast SIP session and integrate the underlying IP Multicast QoS routing protocol and the RSVP resource reservation technique, to support mobile multimedia multicasts. This framework significantly reduces handoff delays and deployment costs and hence achieves end-to-end QoS support for MHs on heterogeneous wireless networks. Further, we mathematically analyze handoff delays of the HRS, BT-MOM and HMSIP schemes. Moreover, simulation results show that the HMSIP can significantly achieve much more stable and lower handoff delays than those of the BT-MOM and HRS only with a small proportion of extra bandwidth than the bandwidth-optimal HRS, thereby supporting higher numbers of handoffs without interrupting multimedia playback of the mobile multicast activity. Tradeoffs between costs for deploying HMSIP Proxies in the framework and corresponding performances of the HMSIP families are discussed. Finally, multimedia QoS improvements of MHs are shown to emphasize advantages by integrating RSVP in this HMSIP framework.

Integrated Mobility Management Methods for Mobile IP and SIP in IP based Wireless Data Networks

With developments in voice over IP (VoIP), IP-based wireless data networks and their application services have received increased attention. While multimedia applications of mobile nodes are served by Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as a signaling protocol, the mobility of mobile nodes may be supported via Mobile IP protocol. For a mobile node that uses both Mobile IP and SIP, there is a severe redundant registration overhead because the mobile node has to make location registration separately to a home agent for Mobile IP and to a home registrar for SIP, respectively. Therefore, we propose two new schemes that integrate mobility management functionality in Mobile IP and SIP. We show performance comparisons among the previous method, which makes separate registration for Mobile IP and SIP without integration, and our two integrated methods. Numerical results show that the proposed methods efficiently reduce the amount of signaling messages and delay time related to the idle handoff and the active handoff.

A Study on the Performance of IPv6-Based Mobility Protocols

The performance of IP mobility protocols is highly dependent on the change of mobile nodes’ (MNs’) mobility and traffic-related characteristics. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the effects of these characteristics and to conduct an in-depth performance study of these protocols. In this paper, we introduce a novel analytical approach using a continuous-time Markov chain model and hierarchical network model for the performance analysis of IPv6 mobility protocols: Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6). According to these analytical models, we derive the location update costs (i.e., binding update costs plus binding renewal costs), packet tunneling costs, and total signaling costs, which are generated by an MN during its average domain residence time, when MIPv6 or HMIPv6 is deployed under the same network architecture, respectively. In addition, based on these derived costs, we investigate the effects of various parameters, such as the average speed of an MN, binding lifetime period, the ratio of the network scale, and packet arrival rate, on the signaling costs generated by an MN under MIPv6 and HMIPv6. Moreover, we conduct the performance comparison between these two protocols by showing the relative total signaling costs under the various conditions. The analytical results show that as the average speed of an MN gets higher and the binding lifetime period is set to the larger value or as its packet arrival rate gets lower, the total signaling cost generated by an MN during its average domain residence time under HMIPv6 will get relatively lower than that under MIPv6, and that under the reverse conditions, the total signaling cost under MIPv6 will get relatively lower than that under HMIPv6.

Multi-agent schema of Mobile IP protocol for mobile environment

Mobile communication has been more and more popular not only because it supports convenient wireless communication within networks but also due to the powerful roaming function among networks without disconnection. In conventional mobile communication designs, there is usually only one single Mobile Agent (MA) in one network, which means the whole network would go out of control once MA fails in the network Another drawback is that each MA and node in the network should maintain the binding information in its own cache. However, ask every node to store and maintain the binding information in its cache is a heavy burden. In this study, the proposed Fault-tolerant Multi-agent based Mobile IP (FMIP) schema, which can solve the above drawbacks of single MA in one network by using the multi-agent based model to provide fault-tolerant capability. In addition, we also solve the drawback of each node should maintain the binding information in its own cache by maintaining the Mobile Agent Table (MAT) and Binding Update Table (BUT) in the MA only. Finally, we shall also provide the Smooth Handoff mechanism, Take Over mechanism, and Recovery mechanism for the mobile environment to provide the powerful fault-tolerant capability.

An Efficient Authentication Scheme between MANET and WLAN Based on Mobile IPv6

One of the major challenges for a wireless network design is the efficient authentication scheme. A mobile node (MN) attached to a WLAN and then moved into an area where the radio signal coverage from the access point (AP) does not exist. The mobile node may reconfigure itself into ad hoc mode and connect to this network. Before the mobile node using the resource, it must be verified whether legally or not. But in Mobile IP protocol, every mobile node must perform the home registration to register with HA every second. If the foreign network is far from the home network, the authentication time delay will be long. To reduce the time delay of authentication and home registration, we provide an efficient registration scheme. We use local authentication to achieve efficiency, and use Mobile IPv6 to support the mobility.

A Layer 3 Movement Detection Algorithm Driving Handovers in Mobile IP

The evolution and the spreading of wireless access technology and the consequent increase of user mobility will make handover procedures critical for the provision of Quality of Service in the next generation wireless Internet. Often, layer 3 handovers are supposed to be driven by access layer procedures. In this way, the movement detection delay can be reduced, but at the expenses of making the Mobile IP protocol dependent of lower layer implementations. Furthermore, this approach may not be effective when users roam among heterogeneous networks. Nevertheless, movement detection algorithms, which operate at the Mobile IP layer, imply appreciable delays, usually intolerable for real time services.In this paper, we propose a Mobile IP handover scheme based on a novel movement detection algorithm at layer 3, able to timely manage migrations by exploiting advertisements losses, combined with a two-timers mechanism.We analyze the performance of our algorithm in terms of handover delay and throughput, and we show that our solution is able to decrease the movement detection delay as much as 47% with respect to other literature solutions that pursue similar approaches. In addition, this feature implies also higher values of the throughput seen by the TCP layer.