Performance Analysis of Seamless Handover in Mobile IPv6-based Cellular Networks

The commercial proliferation of cellular voice and data service has placed a new challenge for mobile communication systems. Next-generation wireless systems are envisioned to have an all-IP-based infrastructure with the support of heterogeneous access technologies (Akyildiz et al., 2004). Under the circumstance, the Internet Protocol (IP) is selected as the common interconnection protocol to integrate disparate wireless systems, so that mobile users can roam among multiple wireless networks, regardless of the underlying different radio access technologies (Akyildiz et al., 2005; Makaya & Pierre, 2008; Mohanty & Xie, 2007). However, with the advent of new value-added services (video-conference, multimedia streaming, etc.) and novel concepts introduced into Long Term Evolution (LTE) architecture of the 4th Generation (4G) networks, provisioning efficient mobilitymanagement with quality of service guarantees and seamless handoff feature become even more important for next-generation wireless network design. Generally, mobility management allows mobile communication systems to locate roaming terminals for voice/data delivery as well as maintaining network connectivity when the terminal moves into a new service area (Akyildiz et al., 1999). Typically, such process contains two aspects: location management and handoff management (Quintero et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2010). Location management enables telecommunication systems to find out the network attachment points of roaming nodes for call/data delivery. It usually contains two components: location update and call delivery (or data delivery). The former requires mobile nodes to provide the system with their location information, while the latter indicates that the system is queried for the location information of specific mobile nodes, and then services are delivered to them while they are away from their home network (Zhang et al., 2010). Handoff management aims to maintain network connectivity when mobile nodes change their network attachment points or access points. Obviously, handoff protocols need to preservemobile users’ network connectivity as they move from one network to another, while simultaneously reducing disruption to the ongoing call/data sessions. Therefore, reducing handoff delay and maximizing session continuity are always the primary goals of handoff management (Dimopoulou et al., 2005). Generally, handoff seamlessness means lower packet Performance Analysis of Seamless Handover in Mobile IPv6-based Cellular Networks 13