A per-application mobility management platform for application-specific handover decision in overlay networks

With the advance of various wireless access technologies, the demand for a mobile user equipped with multiple air interfaces simultaneously executing diverse applications emerged. In such network environments, per-application mobility management is a key to allow each application of an end user device to dynamically and fully take advantage of the most suitable access technology. In this paper, we devised a comprehensive architectural platform with cross-layer techniques to realize this disruptive technology, i.e., perapplication mobility management. The proposed platform enables the triggering of vertical handover decisions based on the dynamic measurements from the entire protocol stack. For per-application, the handover decision as well as the mobility management and the transport/application protocol control adaptation for handover performance optimization are made with cross-layer techniques. Through the simulation results, it is shown that multi-layer handover triggering of the proposed platform enhances the QoS of the application services by making handover decisions when the QoS requirements of an application is not satisfied as well as when a mobile user moves out of the current access network in overlay network environments. It is also presented that per-application handover based on the proposed platform enhances the QoS of the application services compared to the handover approaches which make every on-going service flows handover together to the same access network. 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.