Enhanced fast handoff scheme for heterogeneous wireless networks

Mobility management, integration and interworking of existing wireless systems are important factors to obtain seamless roaming and services continuity in next generation or 4G wireless networks (NGWN/4G). Although, several IPv6-based mobility protocols as well as interworking architectures have been proposed in the literature, they cannot guarantee seamless roaming, especially for real-time applications. Moreover, mobility management protocols are designed for specific needs, for example, the purpose of IPv6-based mobility schemes consists of managing users roaming while ignoring access network discovery. This paper proposes an efficient handoff protocol, called enhanced Handoff Protocol for Integrated Networks (eHPIN), which carries out localized mobility management, fast handoff, and access network discovery. It alleviates services disruption during roaming in heterogeneous IP-based wireless environments. Performance evaluation results show that eHPIN provides significant gain with respect to signaling traffic overhead cost, handoff latency, packet delivery cost, handoff failure and packet loss compared with existing IPv6-based mobility schemes. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.