Network based Load-Aware Mobility Management in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks

One major concern for mobile networks consists of finding efficient ways of handling user mobility so that the handover process has minimum effect on users’ ongoing sessions. Although COAP provides an efficient way for mobility management in IEEE 802.11 wireless mesh networks, it does not control load among multiple MAPs in the network. Thus, in many cases, the attached MAP is overloaded, and extensive delays are experienced during the routing process. To tackle this problem, this paper proposes a load-aware mobility management scheme. The overloaded MAP is detected according to the load estimation. Then the overloaded MAP initiates the search procedure to find the underutilized MAP and transfer the MN’s attachment request to it. The proposed scheme can efficiently balance the handover load among MAPs at the cost of slightly prolonged attachment delay and increased attachment messages compared with COAP.