Proactive Handover Scheme for a Location Aware Mobile IP

Handoff latency in mobile IP results in packet losses and severe performance degradation for delay sensitive real-time applications, such as audio streaming. The various low latency handoff approaches that have been proposed earlier have link layer dependency. In this paper, we propose a handoff scheme that applies location information available to mobile nodes and the access routers to remove link layer dependency and to gain more control over the actual handoff latency and buffering requirement. The scheme presents an intelligent and dynamic neighborhood discovery and avoids the use of multi-cast addresses for handoff. Also, movement of the mobile node is tracked to examine the effect of linear and ping-pong movement on handoff latency. The scheme is built on top of the hierarchical mobile IP approach. We present a simulation model of the proposed protocol that provides us with results on packet loss and buffering requirement for a CBR packet stream. In addition, we discuss issues regarding movement tracking