Efficient mobility management using simplified cellular IP

Mobile IP is useful for providing mobility of Internet users but it has shown its limitations in various aspects such as simplicity, robustness and scalability, particularly with fast moving users requiring many handoffs. A hierarchical structure using micromobility helps to reduce the control signalling overhead associated with handoff by localizing handoff management in a given coverage area and using Mobile IP outside it. Cellular IP is one such micro-mobility protocol that uses two caches: one is a Routing Cache for active users and another is a Paging Cache for idle users. Simplified Cellular IP is a modification of that to reduce control signalling overhead by using a single cache for both types of users. However, it still uses two separate time-out values for routing and paging messages. In this paper we show that by appropriately choosing a single time-out value significant reduction in control signaling overhead can be made. We also show that it reduces packet loss, facilitating efficient micro-mobility management.