Micro-mobility mechanism for smooth handoffs in an integrated ad-hoc and cellular IPv6 network under high-speed movement

The success of the Internet has attracted more people to take part in network navigation. Numerous wireless-communication devices have rapidly evolved in the past decade. The demand for mobile communications is increasing and packet data services through Internet protocol (IP) networks have become a trend. To supply more IP addresses to network devices and improve network performance, a new IP version 6 (IPv6) was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in 1994. IPv6 supports certain features that make mobility management more efficient in mobile IP. A cellular architecture is needed to improve the communications quality and to reduce power consumption, both at the base and mobile stations. In a cellular environment, handoffs occur frequently. Reducing the defects caused by handoffs is extremely important in the mobile network environment. This is especially important for high-speed moving devices. In this paper, a handoff strategy called neighbor-assisted agent architecture, which takes advantage of the ad-hoc network to improve handoff performance, is proposed. Timing analytical and simulation results show that the proposed mechanism can provide a better solution than mobile IP for handoff breaks during high-speed movement.