A Network-Based Local Mobility Management Scheme for Wireless Mesh Networks

Providing mobility support in the Internet has become increasingly important since more and more users are on the go. To address this need, many schemes, including IETF mobile IP, HAWAII, cellular IP and others, have been developed. However, each of these proposals has its own weakness, such as large handover latency, or relatively high deployment cost. Recently, wireless mesh networks are emerging as a quick-and-cheap solution for wide wireless coverage, a necessary first-step to enable pervasive mobility service. In this paper, we describe the design of a novel network-based local mobility management scheme for wireless mesh networks. Our scheme achieves low-latency handover (usually less than 20 milliseconds of network-layer handover time) when users move from one access router to the next within a network domain. Real-time voice and video applications can thus be supported without any service interruption during handover. Our scheme requires no software upgrade on mobile hosts and can work with future MAC-layer technologies and routing protocols. This further reduces the deployment cost of wireless mesh networks.