Intelligent Fast Handover Scheme for Mobile IPv6-based Wireless Local Area Networks

IEEE 802.11-based wireless local area networks (WLANs) have experienced rapid growth for some years. Increasingly ubiquitous, they are deployed in hotspots such as airports, campuses, shopping malls, providing Internet access for mobile users. Meanwhile, Internet service providers can be endowed with substantial increased productivity by enabling roaming users to access data in wireless systems. Such facts render handover management one critical issue for WLANs. Fast handovers for mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) relies on layer two (L2) pre-triggers to anticipate link prediction; this limits its applicability over WLANs. On the other hand, typical L2 handoff results in at least 250 ms delays, this makes supporting real-time application impossible. Thus new mobility management protocol is essential to improve the performance of FMIPv6 over WLANs. This paper proposes a new intelligent fast handover scheme for mobile IPv6-based WLANs. The new approach consists of equipping mobile nodes with pre-configured mobility pattern to select new access point prior to attachment. And access points are location-aware with new functionality to know the operating channels of its neighborhood. To show the effectiveness, simulations are conducted using a wireless network simulator, SimulX. Of which preliminary simulation results demonstrate that our proposal delivers better performance than FMIPv6 when deploying in WLANs.