Intelligent Handoff for Mobile Wireless Internet

This paper presents an intelligent mobility management scheme for Mobile Wireless InterNet – MWIN. MWIN is a wireless service networks wherein its core network consisting of Internet routers and its access network can be built from any Internet-capable radio network. Two major standards are currently available for MWIN, i.e., the mobile IP and wireless LAN. Mobile IP solves address mobility problem with the Internet protocol while wireless LAN provides a wireless Internet access in the local area. However, both schemes solve problems independently at different layers, thereby some additional problems occur, e.g., delayed handoff, packet loss, and inefficient routing. This paper identifies these new problems and performs analyses and some real measurements on the handoff within MWIN. Then, a new handoff architecture that extends the features of both mobile IP and wireless LAN handoff mechanism was proposed. This new architecture consists of mobile IP extensions and a modified wireless LAN handoff algorithm. The effect of this enhancement provides a linkage between different layers for preventing packet loss and reducing handoff latency. Finally, some optimization issues regarding network planning and routing are addressed.     

DiffServ resource allocation for fast handoff in wireless mobileInternet

The next-generation wireless networks are evolving toward a versatile IP-based network that can provide various real-time multimedia services to mobile users. Two major challenges in establishing such a wireless mobile Internet are support of fast handoff and provision of quality of service (QoS) over IP-based wireless access networks. In this article, a DiffServ resource allocation architecture is proposed for the evolving wireless mobile Internet. The registration-domain-based scheme supports fast handoff by significantly reducing mobility management signaling. The registration domain is integrated with the DiffServ mechanism and provisions QoS guarantee for each service class by domain-based admission control. Furthermore, an adaptive assured service is presented for the stream class of traffic, where resource allocation is adjusted according to the network condition in order to minimize handoff call dropping and new call blocking probabilities     

Low-latency mobile IP handoff for infrastructure-mode wireless LANs

The increasing popularity of IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area networks (LANs) lends them credibility as a viable alternative to third-generation (3G) wireless technologies. Even though wireless LANs support much higher channel bandwidth than 3G networks, their network-layer handoff latency is still too high to be usable for interactive multimedia applications such as voice over IP or video streaming. Specifically, the peculiarities of commercially available IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN hardware prevent existing mobile Internet protocol (IP) implementations from achieving subsecond Mobile IP handoff latency when the wireless LANs are operating in the infrastructure mode, which is also the prevailing operating mode used in most deployed IEEE 802.11b LANs. In this paper, we propose a low-latency mobile IP handoff scheme that can reduce the handoff latency of infrastructure-mode wireless LANs to less than 100 ms, the fastest known handoff performance for such networks. The proposed scheme overcomes the inability of mobility software to sense the signal strengths of multiple-access points when operating in an infrastructure-mode wireless LAN. It expedites link-layer handoff detection and speeds up network-layer handoff by replaying cached foreign agent advertisements. The proposed scheme strictly adheres to the mobile IP standard specification, and does not require any modifications to existing mobile IP implementations. That is, the proposed mechanism is completely transparent to the existing mobile IP software installed on mobile nodes and wired nodes. As a demonstration of this technology, we show how this low-latency handoff scheme together with a wireless LAN bandwidth guarantee mechanism supports undisrupted playback of remote video streams on mobile stations that are traveling across wireless LAN segments.     

WLAN接入GPRS核心网的认证机制

无线局域网和移动运营商网络结合起来，利用现有GPRS核心网强大的管理功能和漫游能力，可以拓展无线局域网的业务范围。这一方案中，只有控制信息被传输到移动核心网，而用户数据直接通过IP骨干网传输，这样可以极大地缓解无线数据业务对移动核心网的负荷。如何利用IP机制将移动用户认证信令从终端传到GPRS核心网是设计的难点。本着重分析认证机制及其相关协议。     

移动IP在无线局域网下的一种快速切换方法

针对移动IP在无线局域网下的应用,提出了一种新的基于链路层的移动IP快速切换方法,通过在无线局域网的无线接入点间加入特定的MAC网桥来减少移动节点在切换时产生的切换时延,进而减少移动节点上行和下行方向上的数据包的丢失,达到对移动IP切换进行优化的目的。此方法在无线局域网实际环境中进行了性能测试,结果证明优化后的时延较之原来普通移动IP切换时延有明显降低。     

Adaptive quality of service handoff priority scheme for mobilemultimedia networks

For various advantages including better utilization of radio spectrum (through frequency reuse), lower mobile transmit power requirements, and smaller and cheaper base station equipment, future wireless mobile multimedia networks are likely to adopt micro/picocellular architectures. A consequence of using small cell sizes is the increased rate of call handoffs as mobiles move between cells during the holding times of calls. In a network supporting multimedia services, the increased rate of call handoffs not only increases the signaling load on the network, but makes it very difficult for the network to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) promised to a call at setup or admission time. This paper describes an adaptive QoS handoff priority scheme which reduces the probability of call handoff failures in a mobile multimedia network with a micro/picocellular architecture. The scheme exploits the ability of most multimedia traffic types to adapt and trade off QoS with changes in the amount of bandwidth used. In this way, calls can trade QoS received for fewer handoff failures. The call level and packet level performance of the handoff scheme are studied analytically for a homogeneous network supporting a mix of wide-band and narrow-band calls. Comparisons are made to the performance of the nonpriority handoff scheme and the well-known guard-channel handoff scheme     

Design,Implementation and Evaluation of Programmable Handoff in Mobile Networks

We describe the design, implementation and evaluation of a programmable architecture for profiling, composing and deploying handoff services. We argue that future wireless access networks should be built on a foundation of open programmable networking allowing for the dynamic deployment of new mobile and wireless services. Customizing handoff control and mobility management in this manner calls for advances in software and networking technologies in order to respond to specific radio, mobility and service quality requirements of future wireless Internet service providers. Two new handoff services are deployed using programmable mobile networking techniques. First, we describe a multi-handoff access network service, which is capable of simultaneously supporting multiple styles of handoff control over the same physical wireless infrastructure. Second, we discuss a reflective handoff service, which allows programmable mobile devices to freely roam between heterogeneous wireless access networks that support different signaling systems. Evaluation results indicate that programmable handoff architectures are capable of scaling to support a large number of mobile devices while achieving similar performance to that of native signaling systems.     

A signaling and control architecture for mobility support in wireless ATM networks

This paper presents a signaling and control architecture for mobility support in a wireless ATM network that provides integrated broadband services to mobile terminals. A system level protocol architecture for a wireless ATM network is outlined. The proposed protocol stack incorporates new wireless link MAC, DLC and wireless control sublayers, together with appropriate mobility extensions to the existing ATM network control layer. Wireless control and ATM signaling capabilities required for mobility support are discussed, and preliminary solutions are given for selected major functions. Potential extensions to standard Q.2931 ATM signaling are proposed to support handoff and service parameter/QoS renegotiation required for mobility. An associated wireless control protocol for supporting terminal migration, resource allocation, and handoff is discussed. Preliminary experimental results are given which validate the proposed handoff control protocol on an ATM network testbed.     

Resource management for QoS support in cellular/WLAN interworking

To provide mobile users with seamless Internet access anywhere and anytime/ there is a strong demand for interworking mechanisms between cellular networks and wireless local area networks in the next-generation all-IP wireless networks. In this article we focus on resource management and call admission control for QoS support in cellular/WLAN interworking. In specific, a DiffServ interworking architecture with loose coupling is presented. Resource allocation in the interworking environment is investigated/ taking into account the network characteristics, vertical handoff, user mobility, and service types. An effective call admission control strategy with service differentiation is proposed for QoS provisioning and efficient resource utilization. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed call admission control scheme.     

面向密集部署的超高吞吐率Wi-Fi融合应用技术

为了降低网络密集部署对超高吞吐率( VHT) Wi-Fi性能的影响,提出了VHT Wi-Fi基于软件定义网络( SDN)的网络架构、无线网络侧虚拟化和增强型认证与快速切换技术,以提高系统的共存性、抗干扰性和安全性。实验结果表明,VHT Wi-Fi与SDN、网络功能虚拟化、伽罗瓦/计数模式协议结合,吞吐率性能获得约10%的提升,在保证安全性同时平均切换时延降低至40 ms,可保障VHT Wi-Fi在密集部署网络中发挥重要作用。     

A Kerberized Architecture for Fast Re-authentication in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

In this paper we present an architecture for fast re-authentication, based on the use of the Kerberos protocol, which allows the reduction in the latency introduced for an authentication process based on the Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) when providing network access in mobile networks. The architecture supports two modes of operation, proactive and reactive, to reduce the latency added for the authentication processes which is required when a mobile user changes network points of attachment. Moreover, we provide implementation details on a representative wireless testbed and obtain experimental results from the testbed. Those results are used for simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed architecture for different deployment scenarios and parameters. We also provide a mathematical analysis to compute authentication delay and validate the simulation results. Performance comparison based on the experiment, simulation and analysis show that the proposed architecture can reduce the authentication delay, compared to other alternatives in typical deployment scenarios.     

An adaptive resource management for mobile terminals on vertical handoff

Mobile communications and wireless networks are developing at a fast pace. The increasing number of mobile subscribers and terminals are the real life evidence of the fast growing development in the area of wireless communication. Wireless communication technology is now pursuing 4G (fourth generation) and seeking a scheme to provide quality of service (QoS) to the various applications continuously even moving to another network. In this paper, we proposed a dynamic resource management architecture which considers vertical handoff situation with minimal disruption of service to the users considering seamless provision of QoS. The proposed scheme efficiently manages resources and provides stable services to the mobile terminal. The simulation results show that resource management enabled mobile terminals utilize system resources, CPU and memory, efficiently improved by 40% and 65%, respectively, rather than mobile terminals without resource tuning.     

Design of a lightweight authentication scheme for IEEE 802.11p vehicular networks

With the growing popularity of vehicle-based mobile devices, vehicular networks are becoming an essential part of wireless heterogeneous networks. Therefore, vehicular networks have been widely studied in recent years. Because of limited transmission range of wireless antennas, mobile vehicles should also switch their access points to maintain the connections as conventional mobile nodes. Considering the inherent characteristics of vehicular networks such as dynamic topology and high speed, the question of how to implement handoff protocol under real-time scenarios is very important. IEEE 802.11p protocol is designed for vehicular networks for the long distance transmission. To reduce handoff latency for 802.11p protocol, the authentication phase is waived during the handoff. However, security is also very important for wireless communications, and authentication can forbid access from malicious nodes and prevent wireless communications from potential attacks. Thus, in this paper, a lightweight authentication scheme is introduced to balance the security requirements and the handoff performance for 802.11p vehicular networks. In our scheme, the access points are divided into different trust groups, and the authentication process is completed in a group-based method. Once a vehicle is authenticated by an access point group, during the handoff within the same group, few extra authentication operations are needed. As a result, there is no extra overhead introduced to the authentication servers. Simulation results demonstrate that our authentication scheme only introduces small handoff latency and it is ideal for vehicular networks.     

Running cellular/PWLAN services: practical considerations for cellular/PWLAN architecture supporting interoperator roaming

To offer wireless data access services that are more efficient than GPRS or UMTS networks, public WLANs are in a predominant position to embrace the wireless broadband era. Reusing the existing mechanisms for user authentication, access control, billing, and roaming handling procedures in mobile territory to construct a complementary network, public WLAN (PWLAN) has drawn the attention of cellular operators such as Vodafone and T-Mobile. In this article we aim to investigate a practical end-to-end PWLAN architecture capable of using GPRS/UMTS SIM-based authentication for current mobile users and carrying out Web-based authentication for occasional users without SIM modules simultaneously. Additionally, we consider a confederation of various PWLAN service providers by a RADIUS-based roaming mechanism to leverage the existing resources of cellular operators. The proposed considerations and guidelines provide a baseline skeleton to build an extendable environment and successfully construct a flexible cellular/PWLAN hotspot in mobeeLAN service.     

Mobile IP-DECT internetworking architecture supporting IMT-2000applications

Realistic realization and mass acceptance of mobile data services require networking architectures offering acceptable quality of service and attractive tariffs. A novel strategy for this goal is maximum integration of popular data networking standards and their infrastructure into wireless networks. This article discusses a Mobile IP-based network architecture to provide IP services in DECT to support IMT-2000 applications. DECT offers micromobility within multicell subnets, while Mobile IP supports macromobility between multicell subnets. Incorporating Mobile IP into the DECT handoff mechanism in this way extends DECT micromobility with IP macromobility. Also, utilizing fast, seamless DECT handoff management reduces Mobile IP handoff delay to circumvent TCP throughput degradation during handoff and reduce frequency of Mobile IP signaling over the ether to conserve spectral efficiency. This feature seamlessly unifies DECT with the global Internet. Seamless integration of DECT with the Internet is crucial due to the continuing phenomenal popularity of the Internet and wireless communications, and ubiquity of DECT systems. To achieve the above DECT/IP interworking efficiently, the architecture introduces a network entity called a DECT service switching point, which is an extended DECT central control fixed part. DECT network-level services are mapped onto those of the IETF integrated services architecture to maintain QoS provided by DECT in the backbone Internet. Mobile Resource Reservation Protocol, an extended RSVP tailored to mobile networking, is adopted to provide the needed signaling in IntServ. The proposed architecture preserves traditional non-IP based services such as PSTN voice     

A survey of Mobile IP in cellular and Mobile Ad-Hoc Network environments

The Internet has become ubiquitous and there has been tremendous growth in wireless communications in recent years. Many wireless communication techniques are commercially available, such as the Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, GSM, GPRS and CDMA. Because an all-IP network will be a trend, access to the Internet via wireless communication devices has become an important issue.To reduce power consumption and reuse the limited radio spectrum resources, a cellular network was formed. Cell size is one of the factors in the channel reuse rate. Basically, the channel reuse rate in a smaller cell size is higher than the channel reuse rate in a bigger cell size. Micro-mobility is therefore the inevitable direction for future mobile systems. Frequent and fast movements usually characterize micro-mobility. A cellular architecture would then present a challenge to the frequent handover procedures for a smaller cell size would usually induce a higher handoff frequency.In addition to cellular networks, the ad-hoc network is another network architecture for wireless networks. The ad-hoc network is a non-infrastructure architecture; in which nodes can access services from one another regardless where they are. An excellent routing protocol is crucial for an ad-hoc networking to function at high performance. The main difference between a cellular environment and ad-hoc network is that the ad-hoc method has no fixed infrastructure, allowing nodes to communicate with one another at any time and anywhere.We have mentioned that micro-mobility in a cellular environment would introduce a greater number of handoffs than before. The handoff probability drives the mobile IP mechanism due to signal changes. Using the Mobile IP mechanism, handoff breaking would take place within a micro-mobility environment. Therefore, in this paper, some handoff strategies that take the advantage of the ad-hoc mechanism to improve the handoff performance are investigated.     

Wireless LAN access network architecture for mobile operators

The evolution of IP-based office applications has created a strong demand for public wireless broadband access technology offering capacity far beyond current cellular systems. Wireless LAN access technology provides a perfect broadband complement for the operators' existing GSM and GPRS services in an indoor environment. Most commercial public wireless LAN solutions have only modest authentication and roaming capability compared to traditional cellular networks. This article describes a new wireless LAN system architecture that combines the WLAN radio access technology with mobile operators' SIM-based subscriber management functions and roaming infrastructure. In the defined system the WLAN access is authenticated and charged using GSM SIM. This solution supports roaming between cellular and WLAN access networks and is the first step toward an all-IP network architecture. The proto-type has been implemented and publicly verified in a real mobile operator network     

Mobile flow-aware networks for mobility and QoS support in the IP-based wireless networks

As the volume of mobile traffic consisting of video, voice, and data is rapidly expanding, a challenge remains with the mobile transport network, which must deliver data traffic to mobile devices without degrading the service quality. Since every Internet service holds its own service quality requirements, the flow-aware traffic management in fine granularity has been widely investigated to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) in the IP networks. However, the mobile flow-aware management has not been sufficiently developed yet because of the inherent constraints of flow routing in the mobile networks regarding flow-aware mobility and QoS support. In this paper, we propose a flow-aware mobility and QoS support scheme called mobile flow-aware network (MFAN) for IP-based wireless mobile networks. The proposed scheme consists of dynamic handoff mechanisms based on QoS requirements per flow to reduce the processing overhead of the flow router while ensuring QoS guarantee to mobile flows. The performance analyses of the proposed scheme demonstrate that MFAN successfully supports the mobile flow traffic delivery while satisfying the QoS requirement of flows in the wireless mobile IP networks.     

个人通信系统中的一种移动用户登记认证协议

假冒和窃听攻击是无线通信面临的主要威胁。在个人通信系统中,为了对无线链路提供安全保护,必须对链路上所传送的数据/话音进行加密,而且在用户与服务网络之间必须进行相互认证。近年来,人们在不同的移动通信网络(如GSM,IS-41,CDPD,Wireless LAN等)中提出了许多安全协议。然而,这些协议在个人通信环境中应用时存在不同的弱点。本文基于个人通信系统的双钥保密与认证模型,设计了用户位置登记认证协议;并采用BAN认证逻辑对协议的安全性进行了形式化证明,也对协议的计算复杂性进行了定性分析。分析表明,所提出的协议与现有的协议相比具有许多新的安全特性。     

Mobility and connection management in a wireless ATM LAN

This paper proposes algorithms for handoff, location, and connection management in a wireless asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) local-area network (LAN). Fast handoffs while maintaining cell sequence and quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees are achieved by distributing switching functionality to base stations, and using a networking scheme based on provisioned virtual trees. A new distributed location management scheme using a minimal registration procedure and broadcasts on wired links is proposed for this LAN. The detailed signaling procedures that support the algorithms for mobility and connection management are described. Finally, an implementation of these procedures and an analysis of the measured data is presented. Measurements of service times obtained from this implementation indicate that over 100 calls/s. can be handled by each node in 50-node network with a high-percentage of mobiles (75%) relative to fixed endpoints. This is comparable to current wired ATM switch call handling throughputs, in spite of the fact that these nodes perform additional handoff and location management functions. The data also indicates handoff latency times of 1.3 ms. This validates our proposal for maintaining cell sequence while performing handoffs