IEEE 802.21 transport solution using cross-layer optimized Stream Control Transmission Protocol

The media independent handover (MIH) architecture is designed to facilitate the signaling and enable seamless handovers in heterogeneous networks. In this paper, we propose a solution using the stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) to efficiently carry MIH messages. The solution uses SCTPpsilas multihoming and multistreaming capabilities along with cross-layer information available through the MIH. We analyze the performance of the proposed solution for various packet loss conditions.