An IP mobility management framework based on handover type differentiation and distributed location management

Abstract

Nowadays, mobile network operators provide heterogeneous access networks, such as LTE and Wi-Fi, and users frequently change their connections among various access networks by considering cost, bandwidth, and coverage. However, the current mobile networks do not provide a solution for „wide-area‟ IP mobility due to difficulty and risks from large-scale network upgrade and access-technology heterogeneity. In this paper, we propose an enhanced IP mobility management framework for evolving mobile communication environment represented as 5G network. The proposed framework separates a mobile node‟s handover control from its location management performed with a distributed manner like Domain Name System (DNS), thereby achieving the localized and fast control procedure for IP handovers. In addition, the proposed framework differentiates control schemes for IP handovers according to their types (i.e., forward-forward and forward-backward) to increase control efficiency.