Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 Mobility Management in Heterogeneous 3G/WLAN Networks

The research and development of next generation networks results in continuously growing in heterogeneity of wireless systems. Those systems also offer users the increasing possibility of roaming between different networks, which undoubtedly needs seamless integration. As mobile users continue to expand their requirements for seamless roaming, a good handoff mechanism is necessary especially for cellular networks and wireless local area networks. The most critical problem faced in the handoff mechanism is that users may need immediate data transmission. However, immediate data transmission is always obstructed because handoff latency occurs. In this paper, we propose a Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 handoff scheme using active measurement-foreign mobility agent to measure the residual bandwidth of each access point (AP) for handoff decision. As a result, the proposed scheme prevents whole efficiency from being affected by the registration time and improves immediate data transmission. In addition, a dual-threshold of the received signal strength is used to avoid the ping-pong effect. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the traditional Mobile IPv6 and enhanced multilayer Hierarchical Mobile IPv6.