Distributed home agent mobility management for IP based cellular network.

Abstract

The convergence of wireless networks both fixed and mobile with the Internet is creating a revolution in the way wireless networked resources interact with each other. This thesis is concerned with mobile networks and proposes to deal with the mobility management problems for the mobile computing devices in the next generation of multi-technologies integrated IP based mobile networks. In order to do this, a new distributed home agent approach for mobility management has been developed that harmonizes the concept of micro-mobility and macro-mobility management in order to enable seamless mobility management on different kinds of wireless network environment especially interaction with the legacy cellular network in which resources are limited and expensive. The major contribution of this thesis is three-fold. Firstly, this thesis proposes network access architecture and a distributed mobility management scheme, which enables the mobility of a mobile device in a cellular packet data network in order to reduce the latency and network traffic required to handle the mobility management functionality. A detailed design of the distributed mobility management scheme is presented for the implementation and the conceptual model is analysed. Secondly, simulation of the mobility management schemes using two different network simulation packages to enable a comparison of the simulator functionalities is presented. Finally, the results of the simulation and suggested future work are presented.