An index structure framework to analyze host mobility supports for integrated networks

Convergence is a key design aspect for next generation networks. Developing a general mobility management model is an important requirement for the integrated mobile networks. This paper begins with a survey of mobility management concept. Based on the analysis and comparison, we present a conceptual explanation of mobility management layer for mobility and its management. An index structure framework to analyze host mobility supports for integrated mobile networks is proposed in this paper. Our framework investigates the previous methods for mobility model analysis, and builds a general model to characterize and unify different mobility management schemes into an index structure. In our model, we construct the basic elements of management mechanisms, i.e. node and edge, and define the main operations, namely, update operation and query operation. At the same time, the fundamental performance metrics and the expressions of the cost functions is obtained. The proposed framework is flexible in its elements and parameters, and could be applied for many scenarios. We demonstrate the utility of our framework by evaluating various host mobility support schemes. © 2009 Academy Publisher.