Mobile vertical handover between infrastructure and ad hoc Wi-Fi networks

Abstract

This paper addresses mobility management issues in an environment with both wireless LAN and wireless mesh networks. We first examine wireless mesh network client side transparency within mesh mobility management protocols and then look at standard mobility management protocols. The client side transparency scheme enables mobile nodes to support mobility in heterogeneous and homogeneous networks. However, they are not necessarily compatible with mobile IP protocols. Although a typical mesh topology tends to be an unplanned graph and routes change dynamically, standard mobility management protocols such as MIPv6, HMIPv6, and FMIPv6 may be used for mobility management in wireless mesh networks. To learn how MIPv6 operates, we used the OPNET 16.0 MIPv6 model to simulate a heterogeneous wireless environment comprising both WLAN and WMN. The simulation results show that MIPv6 is able to manage vertical handover between WLAN and WMN. However, in our opinion, its performance with both route optimization and tunneled traffic mechanisms is not effective enough. MIPv6 suffers from handover latency and packet loss which can combine to compromise delaysensitive applications such as video conferencing.