A seamless QoS-enabled mobility management mechanism for moving networks

The demand for resource-hungry applications whilst on the move is growing, and is being fuelled in particular by the increasing availability of high-quality multimedia services. To this end, micro-mobility protocols play an important role in providing seamless data delivery to terminals as they roam across different networks. However, such protocols typically lead to bottleneck congestion occurring within the access network. Within moving networks, in which a potentially vast number of terminals are present, the bottleneck congestion problem is significantly magnified, and can lead to increased call dropping probability and/or quality-of-service degradation. This paper therefore presents a novel mechanism, designed to ensure that the continuity of all sessions of a moving network is seamlessly preserved as it performs handovers to and within micro-mobility- enabled access networks.