Seamless Support for Mobile Internet Protocol Based Cellular Environments

Cellular is the inevitable architecture for the Personal Communication Service system (PCS) in the coming future. Access to the Internet via cellular networks is expected to become an essential portion of future wireless service offerings. Providing seamless support for IP based packet switched services has become an important issue. The Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF’s) mobile IP protocol offers a standard solution for wide-area mobility at the IP layer. However, Mobile IP does not solve all of the problems involved in providing mobile Internet access to cellular users, especially during handoff period. Thus, IPv6 might be a good candidate to solve this problem. IPv6 is a new version of the Internet Protocol that was standardized by the IETF. It supports mobility and is presently being standardized by the IETF Mobile IP Working Group. At the same time, cellular is an inevitable architecture for the Personal Communication Service system (PCS). This paper introduces the current cellular support based on the Mobile Internet Protocol version 6. We will point out the short-falls using Mobile IP and try to emphasize protocols especially for mobile management schemes that can optimize a high speed mobile station moving among small wireless cells. A comparison between those schemes and future work will be presented.