Connection Rerouting for Wireless ATM Networks

Wireless ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) is an emerging technology designed to provide multimedia and other Quality of Service-oriented applications to mobile users by extending ATM connections to involve wireless links. The use of wireless ATM has also been motivated by an increasing deployment of ATM technology in backbone networks and also due to the need to support emerging services in the next generation (broadband) wireless networks, both terrestrial and satellite based. Since ATM was originally designed for high bandwidth and low error rate environment to support stationary users, the use of ATM in wireless environment raises many interesting issues. These include managing end-to-end ATM connection (using connection re-routing), maintaining location information about users as they move, supporting transmission of ATM cells over wireless links, and supporting quality of service )QoS( requirements in limited bandwidth environment. As users move, the end-to-end ATM connections need to be rerouted to support continued communications. The design of such rerouting schemes has recently received some consideration in literature, however many important issues including support for multicast and overhead requirements have not been fully addressed. In this paper, we present a detailed treatment of connection rerouting issues, design and performance evaluation of two rerouting schemes, and the support for multicast rerouting.