Optimized HMIPv6 (O-HMIPv6): reducing handoff latency in HMIPv6 networks

In this paper, we propose a seamless handoff management technique called optimized HMIPv6 (O-HMIPv6), an extension of HMIPv6, which eliminates the DAD procedure and router advertisement latency involved in regular HMIPv6 handoff procedure. The O-HMIPv6 is based on homogeneous prefix concept. The 64 bit IPv6 prefix is divided into two parts: network identifier (NID) and subnet identifier (SID). The HMIPv6 network is designed in such a way that each AR of a domain advertises the same NID. When an MN configures RCoA, MAP guarantees the uniqueness of NID and MN's IID pair within the MAP domain in a robust manner, so that the LCoA configuration does not require DAD procedure resulting in decreased handoff latency. When MN performs IP handoff, AR handles MN's movement detection process and it transfers the local mobility messages through the L2 messages. It eliminates the router advertisement latency and reduces the location update latency further. Through numerical results, we have shown that O-HMIPv6 reduces handoff latency almost 91% from HMIPv6 still keeping the signalling cost same.