Fast Handover Latency Analysis in Proxy Mobile IPv6

In Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), any involvement by the Mobile Node (MN) is not required so that any tunneling overhead could be removed from over-the-air. However, during the PMIPv6 handover process, there still exists a service interruption period during which the MN is unable to send or receive data packets because of PMIPv6 protocol operations. To reduce the handover latency, Fast Handover for PMIPv6 (PFMIPv6) is being standardized in the IETF MIPSHOP working group. In PFMIPv6, however, handover initiation can be false, resulting in the PFMIPv6 handover process done so far becoming unnecessary. Therefore, in this paper, we provide a thorough analysis of the handover latency in PFMIPv6, considering the false handover initiation case. The analysis is very meaningful to obtain important insights on how PFMIPv6 improves the handover latency. Further, our analytical study is verified by simulation results.