A mechanism to support efficient soft handover in heterogeneous wireless networks

Next-generation wireless networks should be able to coordinate and integrate different communication systems. It has been a challenging problem to support a seamless handover in these diverse wireless network environments. The design of an All-IP wireless network requires an efficient and flexible handover management. In this paper we propose an efficient mechanism to support soft-handover management over heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed mechanism exploits IPv6 protocols futures and coexists with MIPv6. It can provide data transmission continuity for delayed constrained applications and allow efficient micro mobility management.