A Survey of IP Layer Mobility Management Protocols in Next Generation Wireless Networks

Abstract

This chapter provides a survey of IP layer mobility management protocols in next generation wireless networks. In all-IP-based next generation wireless networks, mobile nodes freely change their points of attachment to the network while communicating with correspondent nodes. Hence, mobility management consists of a critical issue, which is to track mobile users’ current location and to efficiently route packets to them. This chapter elaborates the mobility management procedure for the protocols such as mobility support in IPv6 (MIPv6), hierarchical mobile IPv6 mobility management (HMIPv6), fast handovers for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6), fast handover for hierarchical mobile IPv6 (F-HMIPv6) and proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6). Furthermore, future trends about mobility management are described as well. He authors hope that understanding these mobility management protocols can not only help the researchers to find more advanced solutions in this field, but also provide a training toolkit within the mobile operators.