Proactive Mobility for future IP Wireless Access Networks

This paper presents an architecture and protocol in support of proactive mobility for future IP Wireless Access Networks (IP-WANs). It encompasses a novel approach for seamless handoff and proactive relocation of IP roaming state. The latter establishes a generic substrate for proactive state relocation of different context classes relating to the state of IP connectivity for a mobile node (MN). To address such form of IP mobility, the proposed model identifies a tentative mobility matrix (TMM), which represents an accurate mapping between a mobility neighbourhood vector (MNV), surrounding the current point of attachment of an MN and the correct underlying routing neighbourhood vector (RNV), over arbitrary routing topologies. Sustained IP connectivity is achieved by introducing a 1-neighbour-lookahead (1-NL) view of IP roaming state derived from the established TMM component; seamlessness is pursued through mapping of the 1-NL component to some tentative care-of address (tCoA) onto the IP Multicast domain; this allows abstracting a plurality of candidate care-of address instantiations of the MN onto a single handoff routing identifier.