Performance Analysis of IPv6-Based Handovers in Wireless Heterogeneous Networks

Integration of IP based wireless networks in 4G makes seamless handover an important issue. Fast handover uses anticipation of future events based on L2 trigger information for reducing handover latency. Therefore it is necessary to evaluate and compare Mobile IPv6 protocol with other existing mobility management protocols in terms of handoff latency and packet loss. In this paper, performance of IP-based mobility management protocols have been compared by investigating the effect of L2 triggering time, packet arrival rate and average queuing delay on handoff latency and packet loss. Numerical results show that L2 triggering time, packet arrival rate and average queuing delay are important factor for optimization of handover performance.