MIPv6 is one of the dominating protocols that enable a mobile node to maintain its connectivity to the Internet when moving from one access router to another. However, it suffers from long handoff latency and routing inefficiency. In this paper, we present a novel distributed mobility management scheme, ADA (Asymmetric Double-agents Architecture), which introduces two mobility agents to serve one end-to-end communication. One mobility agent is located close to the MN to limit the amount of MIPv6 signaling traffic outside the local domain. The other mobility agent is located close to the CN to minimize routing overheads. Quantitative analysis shows that ADA significantly outperforms the existing mobility management protocols.

In heterogeneous wireless networks, handoff can be separated into two parts: horizontal handoff (HHO) and vertical handoff (VHO). VHO plays an important role to fulfill seamless data transfer when mobile nodes cross wireless access networks with different link layer technologies. Current VHO algorithms mainly focus on when to trigger VHO, but neglect the problem of how to synthetically consider all currently available networks (homogeneous or heterogeneous) and choose the optimal network for HHO or VHO from all the available candidates. In this paper, we present an analytical framework to evaluate VHO algorithms. Subsequently, we extend the traditional hysteresis based and dwelling-timer based algorithms to support both VHO and HHO decisions and apply them to complex heterogeneous wireless environments. We refer to these enhanced algorithms as E-HY and E-DW, respectively. Based on the proposed analytical model, we provide a formalization definition of the handoff conditions in E-HY and E-DW and analyze their performance. Subsequently, we propose a novel general handoff decision algorithm, GHO, to trigger HHO and VHO in heterogeneous wireless networks. Analysis shows that GHO can achieve better performance than E-HY and E-DW. Simulations validate the analytical results and verify that GHO outperforms traditional algorithms in terms of the matching ratio, TCP throughput and UDP throughput.

The next generation wireless networking (4G) is envisioned as a convergence of different wireless access technologies with diverse levels of performance. Vertical handoff (VHO) is the basic requirement for convergence of different access technologies and has received tremendous attention from the academia and industry all over the world. During the VHO procedure, handoff decision is the most important step that affects the normal working of communication. In this paper, we propose a novel vertical handoff decision algorithm, self- adaptive VHO algorithm (SAVA), and compare its performance with conventional algorithms. SAVA synthetically considers the long term movement region and short term movement trend of mobile hosts, and achieves a good integrative handoff performance.

In recent years, many research works have focused on vertical handoff (VHO) decision algorithms. However, evaluation scenarios in different papers are often quite different and there is no consensus on how to evaluate performance of VHO algorithms. In this paper, we address this important issue by proposing an approach for systematic and thorough performance evaluation of VHO algorithms. Firstly we define the evaluation criteria for VHO with two metrics: matching ratio and average ping-pong number. Subsequently we analyze the general movement characteristics of mobile hosts and identify a set of novel performance evaluation models for VHO algorithms. Equipped with these models and evaluation criteria, we evaluate and analyze two types of decision algorithms: hysteresis based and dwelling-timer based algorithms. The results show a good match between simulation and analytical results.