A novel handover mechanism over WiMedia UWB networks: Early buffering and fast forwarding

This paper proposes a novel handover mechanism over WiMedia UWB bridged environments. The bridged networks are interconnected with multiple UWB domains to overcome the limitation of short transmission range less than 10 meters. In this environment when mobile nodes try to move another domain, some problems occur, such as packet loss, delayed handover, and performance degradation. To support mobility over UWB networks this novel handover mechanism provides early buffering and fast forwarding functions. With early buffering function, the home bridge buffers incoming packets to mitigate packet loss as soon as it detects mobile node´s movement after 3 superframes. Fast forwarding function enables the buffered packets to be forwarded to the mobile node via a foreign bridge, compensating performance degradation and reducing handover latency. The simulation results of packet loss and throughput provide a good evidence to demonstrate the efficiency of early buffering and fast forwarding under different speed assumption.