A Survey of Mobility Management in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks

Mobility management is vital for realizing large-scale wireless mesh networks to provide cost-effective broadband Internet access. Although a considerable amount of research on mobility management for cellular, mobile IP, and mobile ad hoc networks has been proposed, mobility management for IP-based hybrid WMNs, including the mobility support from both the network and link layers, remains largely unexplored. Traditional mobility management mechanisms, when applied to hybrid WMNs, may cause significant performance degradation because of the overlooking of key features of WMNs. Challenges arising from multihop wireless communications require the design of new mobility management techniques in WMNs. In this article, mobility management in IP-based hybrid WMNs is investigated. The motivation for mobility management in WMNs is explained, and the existing work is surveyed. To address the new challenges, various open design issues also are presented.