Mobility Protocols and Handover Optimization: Design, Evaluation and Application

Chapter 2Analysis of Mobility Protocols for Multimedia

Mobility management consists of two components: location management and handoff management. Location management enables the network to discover the current point of attachment of the mobile user so that a new connection can be established when a new multimedia call arrives. Handoff management, often known as terminal mobility, allows the network to maintain the user's connection binding as the mobile node moves from one attachment point to another in the network. We focus on handoff management in this book.

2.1 Summary of Key Contributions and Indicative Results

Over the last three decades, several generations of mobility protocols have evolved without any systematic design approach, and these protocols have used ad hoc mechanisms to optimize the handoff performance. Without any systematic analysis of the handover components and optimization mechanisms, it is difficult to predict the systems performance of these mobility protocols or design any new mobility protocol for the next generation of networks.

Here, we analyze the system architecture of each of the available mobility protocols (e.g., 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, and several IP-based mobility protocols), describe the respective handoff mechanisms, and then compare the handoff mechanisms in terms of their common mobility functions. For example, we extrapolate how discovery, configuration, authentication, and media routing functions are performed for each of the cellular and IP-based ...