Identity/location Separation-based Mobility Management Mechanism for 5G HetNets

The emergence of 5G networks has led to a significant increase in the number of base stations, resulting in smaller network coverage areas for individual base stations. The presence of various heterogeneous access nodes further exacerbates the situation, as the time for handover signal interactions becomes shorter. Traditional mobile management mechanisms, however, lack comprehensive considerations and are prone to issues such as low switch efficiency. Therefore, this paper proposes a mobile management mechanism based on identity-location separation. By utilizing identity and routing identifiers, this approach addresses the strong coupling issues of Internet Protocol (IP), effectively mitigating problems associated with mobile anchor points and reducing signaling overhead. To maintain mobility in access networks, this study introduces Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) technology. By acquiring additional contextual information, the proposed mechanism executes corresponding handover decision algorithms, including residence time predictions within small cell clusters and business-driven network access selection. Simulation results validate the superiority of the proposed mechanism over traditional cellular handover mechanisms.