Optimized FMIPv6 handover using IEEE802.21 MIH services

The emerging IEEE802.21 standard defines Media Independent Handover Functions (MIHF) that assist mobile nodes to seamlessly roam across heterogeneous access networks. The aim of this paper is to present a mechanism which uses existing IEEE802.21 MIH services to optimize the Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) procedure. For this, we have exploited the 802.21 Information services in particular to tackle issues such as radio access discovery and candidate access router discovery which are critical to the handover performance of FMIPv6. We will show through analysis that, when our proposed mechanism is applied, it increases the probability of predictive mode of operation by reducing the anticipation time and thereby reduces the overall expected handover latency in FMIPv6.