Utilization of the IEEE802.11 power save mode with IP paging

Mobile communication systems increasingly adopt Internet protocol solutions for transport of control and data traffic. To optimize scalability of the mobile communication infrastructure as well as to save scarce radio bandwidth and mobile energy resources, mobile devices can enter a power save mode and refrain from sending superfluous location information towards the network in case the device is idle. Such systems utilize paging to locate and reactivate mobile devices in power save mode, as well as to initiate re-establishment of routing information in the network. The well accepted wireless LAN standard IEEE802.11 supports mechanisms for power saving while a mobile terminal is associated with a particular access point. But paging control of mobile devices in power save mode beyond the scope of a single access point is not part of the standard IEEE802.11 application. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to integrate and utilize existing IEEE802.11 power save mode with an IP paging architecture and protocol without the need to modify the IEEE802.11 standard. In addition to the IP paging protocol operation, the proposal covers an appropriate addressing and identification scheme, which can be utilized for other access technologies as well. An analytical evaluation of energy and paging delay costs allows estimation of the proposed mechanism´s efficiency, which might be sub-optimal for high load conditions, but appropriate to support migration scenarios towards future heterogeneous access mobile communication networks.