PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF INTEGRATED MACRO AND MICRO MOBILITY PROTOCOLS FOR WIDE AREA WIRELESS NETWORKS

ISSN: 2229-6948 (ONLINE) ICTACT JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY, MARCH 2010, VOLUME: 01, ISSUE: 01 DOI: 10.21917/ijct.2010.0009 PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF INTEGRATED MACRO AND MICRO MOBILITY PROTOCOLS FOR WIDE AREA WIRELESS NETWORKS R.Gunasundari1, A.R.Gunabarathy2 1 Department of Electronics and Communication, Pondicherry Engineering College, Pondicherry, India E-mail: 2 Department of Electronics and Instrumentation, St. Joseph College of Engineering, Chennai, India E-mail: In this paper, new integrated network architecture is proposed and it is based on the concept that most of the mobility can be managed locally within one domain without loading the core network [2] [3], as illustrated in Fig.1. This network architecture uses the standard Internet for the core network. Abstract The success of next generation wireless networks will rely much on advanced mechanisms for seamless mobility support among emerging heterogeneous technologies. Currently, Mobile IP is the most promising solution for mobility management in the Internet. Several IP micro mobility approaches have been proposed to enhance the performance of Mobile IP which supports quality of service, minimum packet loss, limited handoff delay and scalability and power conservation but they are not scalable for macro mobility. A practical solution would therefore require integration of Mobile IP and Micro mobility protocols where Mobile IP handles macro mobility and micro mobility protocols handles micro mobility. In this paper an integrated mobility management protocol for IP based wireless networks is proposed and analyzed. Simulation results presented in this paper are based on ns 2. INTERNET H GW C GW Keywords: Mobile IP, Micro mobility protocols, Seamless handoff, Integration, Protocol performance MN 1. INTRODUCTION BS DOMAIN Increased research and development in the field of ubiquitous computing and particularly environments with embedded computers, information appliances and multimodal sensors allowing people to perform tasks efficiently by offering unprecedented levels of access to information and assistance from computers, has heightened the need for a comprehensive mobility solution. Existing mobility protocols are often categorized as either macro or micro mobility but a few, if any, bridge the divide between the two. Mobile IP is at present the IETF proposed standard for delivery of IP packets to mobile devices [1] [2]. However, as a macro mobility protocol, it does not adequately support data delivery to mobile devices that regularly roam within local networks. Hierarchical Mobile IP (HMIP), Cellular IP (CIP) and Handoff Aware Wireless Access Internet Infrastructure (HAWAII) protocols fall under the banner of micro mobility and as such deliver a number of benefits that macro mobility protocols alone could not. It is essential in smart environments to allow mobile hosts to roam seamlessly between areas to facilitate the continuous accessibility to services. Hierarchical Mobile IP, Cellular IP and HAWAII allow for roaming within a local area and do so with a nominal number of control signals, keeping network traffic to a minimum. However, Hierarchical Mobile IP, Cellular IP and HAWAII are not apt for global roaming so they must be used in conjunction with a macro management protocol such as Mobile IP. MN DOMAIN Fig.1 Macro and Micro mobility Protocols Integrated Architecture The Mobile IP is used as an interdomain mobility protocol for macro mobility management, while Hierarchical Mobile IP, Cellular IP and HAWAII are employed for intra subnet mobility as support to the micro mobility and paging management [4][5][6][7][9]. Performance comparisons between the integration of Mobile IP/ Hierarchical Mobile IP protocols, the integration of Mobile IP/Cellular IP and the integration of Mobile IP / HAWAII protocols based on the number of packets lost during handoff and the throughput is also presented in this paper. For this comparison, the UDP and TCP probing traffic between the corresponding host and mobile hosts are used. The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 gives a brief description of Mobile IP and HAWAII protocol and in Section 3 integration of MIP and HAWAII protocol is presented. In Section 4, the implementation procedure and performance results are presented in Section 5. Conclusions are made in Section 6. 61 R.GUNASUNDARI AND A.R.GUNABARATHY: PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF INTEGRATED MACRO AND MICRO MOBILITY PROTOCOLS FOR WIDE AREA WIRELESS NETWORKS 2. PROTOCOL OVERVIEW 2.3 CELLULAR IP 2.1 MOBILE IP The Cellular IP protocol [7] [8] from Columbia University and Ericsson Research supports paging and a number of handoff techniques. Location management and handoff support are integrated with routing in Cellular IP access networks. To minimize control messaging, regular data packets transmitted by mobile hosts are used to refresh host location information. Cellular IP uses mobile originated data packets to maintain reverse path routes. Nodes in a Cellular IP access network monitor (i.e., “snoop") mobile originated packets and maintain a distributed, hop-by-hop location data base that is used to route packets to mobile hosts. Cellular IP uses IP addresses to identify mobile hosts. The loss of downlink packets when a mobile host moves between access points is reduced by a set of customized handoff procedures. Cellular IP supports two types of handoff scheme. Cellular IP hard handoffs based on a simple approach that trades of some packet loss in exchange for minimizing handoff signaling rather than trying to guarantee zero packet loss. Cellular IP semisoft handoff prepares handoff by proactively notifying the new access point before actual handoff. Semisoft handoff minimizes packet loss providing improved TCP and UDP performance over hard handoff. Cellular IP also supports IP paging and is capable of distinguishing active and idle mobile hosts. The starting point for the design of an IP-based mobility management protocol is with Mobile IP, an IETF proposed standard [1][2][3][4]. Mobile IP provides a network layer solution to node mobility across IP networks. In Mobile IP, Mobility agents make themselves known by sending agent advertisement messages. An impatient MN may optionally solicit an agent advertisement message. After receiving an agent advertisement, a MN determines whether it is on its home network or a foreign network. While roaming, a Mobile Node (MN) maintains two IP addresses, a permanent home address used in all transport layer connections, and a topologically correct care-of address that reflects the current point of attachment. The care-of address is obtained through either a foreign agent or an auto-configuration process. While at home the MN uses its permanent home address. A location register on the home subnet, referred to as a Home Agent (HA), maintains a mobility binding that maps the MN home address to a care-of address. The HA acts as proxy on the ho (...truncated)