Hybrid Robust Header Compression in Proxy Mobile IPv6 over Wireless Mesh Networks

A wireless mesh network (WMN) is a promising technology for ubiquitous wireless access. IP mobility support is indispensable in large-scale WMNs. In this paper, we introduce a novel WMN architecture where Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) is employed as an IP mobility support protocol. Due to the tunneling procedure in PMIPv6, PMIPv6-based WMNs can lead to long packet delivery latency especially in voice over IP (VoIP) applications. Therefore, we propose a hybrid robust header compression (ROHC) scheme where either end-to-end header compression or hop-by-hop header compression is dynamically determined depending on the packet delay requirement. Simulation results demonstrate that the hybrid ROHC scheme can effectively reduce packet delivery latency in PMIPv6-based wireless networks.