Handoff Schemes and Mobility Management in Vehicular Ad-hoc Network

There has been significant progress in the field of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) over the last several years which support vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. With the two types of communication modes, user can access the internet and existing mobility management can be reviewed. Mobility management and handoffs are the most challenging research issues for vehicular networks to support a variety of intelligent transportation system (ITS) applications. The traditional mobility management schemes for Internet and mobile ad hoc network (MANET) cannot meet the requirements of vehicular networks, and the performance degrades severely due to the unique characteristics of vehicular networks (e.g., high mobility). Therefore, mobility management solutions developed specifically for vehicular networks would be required. Also, Internet connection for vehicular ad-hoc networks faces a great challenge: vehicle is moving so fast that it may cause the frequent handoffs, which may cause packet delay and packet loss problem. This paper presents an overview on mobility management for vehicular network and steps involved in a vehicular ad-hoc network handoffs process along with handoffs classification and reviews of some related studies which reduce the handoffs latency.