MPLS Assisted Handover in IP-Based Mobility Management Schemes: A Survey

Mobility in IP-based wireless networks is basically handled by Mobile IP protocols which suffer from long handover latency and high signaling overhead, this latency is partly because of tunneling process between mobile node and mobility agents. MPLS (Multi Protocol Label switching) has been integrated into Mobile IP schemes to lessen the burden of IP packets tunneling in mobility domain. In this paper we presented a review of more prominent and mostly cited combinational proposals of MPLS and Mobile IP. To reach a comparative sense, a general taxonomy based on three important aspects of this combination was suggested: Integration level, Hierarchical or non-hierarchical structure and length of MPLS tunnels. Consequently a functional comparison of MPLS Assisted IP-based mobility management has been provided.