An IEEE 802.21 MIH Functionality Assisted Proxy Mobile IPv6 for Reducing Handover Latency and Signaling Cost

This paper proposes an IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) functionality assisted Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) mechanism for reducing handover latency and signaling cost in heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed mechanism comes to support fast vertical handover for the mobile node (MN) irrespective of the presence or absence of MIH functionality as well as IP mobility functionality. That is, the MN does not need to be participated in any MIH related signaling for handover procedure, which can be consistent with the essential objective of the PMIPv6. The base station with MIH functionality performs handover on behalf of the MN. Therefore, the proposed mechanism can reduce burden and power consumption of MNs with limited resource and battery power. In addition, the analytical evaluation shows that the proposed mechanism can outperform the existing mechanism in terms of handover latency and total number of over-the-air signaling messages. Thus, the proposed mechanism can be expected to reduce the packet loss and the bandwidth consumption of wireless links during handover procedure comparing with the existing mechanism.