An Efficient Fast Handover Scheme For PMIPv6Using Adaptive Link Triggering Mechanism

Proxy Mobile IPv6(PMIPv6) is standard by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) network local mobility management (NETLMM) working group in2008. PMIPv6is proposed to provide network-based mobility management support without requiring any involvement of mobile node (MN) in mobility related signaling, so that tunneling overhead can be removed from over-the-air. However, because of the reactive mode adopted in which "break-before-make" technique is concerned, PMIPv6still suffers from long handover latency and high packet loss. This is unacceptable for delay sensitive services, such as real-time and multimedia applications.To reduce handover latency and packet loss in proxy mobile IPv6handover procedure, IETF proposed fast handover for proxy mobile IPv6(FPMIPv6) in2011. FPMIPv6proposed two handover modes:predictive fast handover mode and reactive handover mode. In the predictive fast handover mode of FPMIPv6, handover procedure is initiated before the current link goes down, and bidirectional tunnel between the previous mobile access gateway (p-MAG) and new mobile access gateway (n-MAG) is established prior to the mobile node’s attachment, which reduces communication interrupt time and packets lost. However, when mobile node moves too fast, there may not be enough time to complete the handover preparation process in predictive mode of FPMIPv6, where reactive mode must be taken, which will unfortunately bring significant service interruption and packet loss problem. Moreover, in FPMIPv6, packet delivery cost is increased because of the bi-directional tunnel between previous mobile access gateway and the new mobile access gateway.In this paper, we propose an efficient fast handover scheme using adaptive link triggering mechanism for PMIPv6networks. As in FPMIPv6, reactive mode should be taken when the predictive fast handover mode fails, which will unfortunately bring significant service interruption and packet loss problem, adaptive link layer triggering mechanism is used in our scheme. Handover process is dynamically initiated using MN’s speed and time needed for completing pre-handover operations information, thus success of predictive fast handover mode is guaranteed. Our proposed scheme proactively performs the authentication and registration processes in PMIPv6before the current link goes down, thereby enabling mobile node to reconfigure its interface and resume to receive packets from the corresponding node more quickly after a handover. Performance is evaluated in terms of layer3handover latency and packet delivery cost based on predictive mode failure probability. Both numerical and simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly enhances the handover performance compared with the original PMIPv6and fast handovers for PMIPv6(FPMIPv6).