Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 based fast vertical handover scheme for heterogeneous wireless networks

In this paper, the new fast vertical handover scheme is proposed for the hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) to optimize and enhance the existing fast vertical handover HMIPv6 (FVH-HMIPv6) in heterogeneous wireless access networks. The recently standardized IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover Function (MIHF) is adopted for the proposed FVH-HMIPv6. Firstly, the Media Independent Information Service (MIIIS) is extended by including new L3 information to provide domain prefixes of heterogeneous neighbouring mobility anchor points (MAPs), which is critical to the handover performance of proposed FVH-FMIPv6 with MIHF. Secondly, the operation procedure for the proposed scheme is described in detail. Finally, the analysis for handover performance is performed for the proposed scheme and the existing scheme, which shows the proposed FVH-HMIPv6 with MIHF can optimize and enhance the handover performance of the existing scheme.