T IP - Based Access Network Infrastructure for Next - Generation Wireless Data Networks

Internet is growing exponentially due to an increased subscriber base and new applications. Wide area wireless networks are also experiencing rapid growth in terms of subscribers. Currently, there are many efforts underway to provide data services on wireless access networks. The Internet Protocol (IP) is the dominant internetworking protocol in operation today. The logical choice for a networking protocol for wireless data networks is also IP for several reasons. First, by using an IP-based network, applications written for wired data networks can operate on wireless networks. Second, to defray cost, integrated wireless and wireline networks can be built and managed. Third, advances on IP technology, such as IP telephony and quality of service (QoS), may be directly applied to the wireless networks. This will enable wireless networks based on IP to provide voice service as well as data services, thus allowing them to tap into the vast subscriber base of cellular voice customers. We believe all mobility-related functionality should be handled at the IP (network) layer. This enables the deployment of a homogeneous, IP-based wireless access network that is independent of the different wireless interfaces. Only wireless-link-specific processing is relegated to the base stations. We achieve this by extending the IP layer software running in routers and base stations in the access network. We adopt a domain-based division of the IP mobility protocols. One of the motivations for our domain-based approach hinges on the assumption that most mobility is local to a domain. In particular, most user mobility is typically contained within an administrative domain of the network. Since an administrative domain is under the control of a single authority, it is possible to incorporate special support for mobility in the infrastructure. This domain-based management approach is similar to the division of existing routing protocols into intradomain routing protocols such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP) or Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and interdomain routing protocols such as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). Another recent solution for mobility management, Cellular IP [1], also adopts a domain-based approach. However, while network elements in the Cellular IP domain are specialized for mobility management, our solution augments regular IP routers with mobility support so that these routers can also be used to route other wired IP traffic as well. In this article we present the design of an IP-based access network infrastructure for next-generation wireless networks. In the access network we use the Internet standard, …