A proposal of fast vertical handover by virtual MAC address scheme on mobile Ethernet

The 3G cellular system is in business and the next generation wireless system called beyond 3G is said to come up in the market. For future wireless systems, there are activities to integrate the heterogeneous wireless accesses into all the IP network using the IP technologies. However, the enhanced IP technologies face addressing and handover related issues for mobility management and need security considerations for wireless access. We proposed the mobile Ethernet architecture based on Ethernet technologies, which provides layer 2 mobility solution, and discussed the IPv4/lPv6 independence and addressing simplicity. The architecture is scalable by reducing extra traffic in the metropolitan area where the various wireless accesses are available. In this paper, we propose a virtual MAC address scheme on the mobile Ethernet as a unique identifier of a mobile device and present a handover mechanism by the address scheme to realize fast movement across different wireless accesses within the network. We also evaluate signaling traffic by using a simulation related to mobility management on wireless access and show that the architecture based on the address scheme has scalability when it supports fast and frequent movements of mobile devices.