Handoff Protocol for Heterogeneous All-IP-based Wireless Networks

Next generation wireless networks (NGWN) or 4G are envisioned to be a combination of different architectures and wireless technologies. This brings several design and deployment challenges, such as mobility management, quality of service (QoS) provision and networks interworking. Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) and its extensions, like HMIPv6 and FMIPv6, have been proposed for IP layer mobility management in NGWN. However, these protocols are hindered by several shortcomings; they fail to ensure seamless communications and support of real-time applications. This paper proposes a new and efficient mobility management protocol namely, handoff protocol for integrated networks (HPIN), based on score function, fast handover and anticipated resources reservation principles, to alleviate service disruption during users roaming by allowing selection of the best available network. The implementation of HPIN has been subject to extensive tests and results obtained show its benefit in terms of QoS than traditional and existing handoff protocols