Proactive seamless mobility management for future IP radio access networks

Cellular communications are aligning rapidly to adopt suitable network models for supporting packet switched services over IP networks. Pure third generation (3G) wireless architectures have already adopted IP as the network layer bearer within their core network component specification. This article presents an architecture and protocol in support of proactive mobility management for future IP radio access networks. It encompasses a novel approach for seamless handoff and proactive allocation of PDP context with respect to 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–routing matrix (TMM), which represents an accurate mapping between a mobility neighbourhood vector (MNV), surrounding the current GPRS-attachment point 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 PDP roaming state derived from the established TMM component; seamlessness is pursued through mapping of the 1-NL component to some handoff care-of address 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. q 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.