Performance analysis of Basic Support Protocol (BSP) in nested Network Mobility (NeNEMO)

The IETF has standardized NEtwork MObility (NEMO) Basic Support Protocol (NEMO BSP) to support network mobility. It uses a specialized mobile router (MR) that directly connects to the cellular network. However, in some situations, to maintain connectivity, one MR may come under the control of another MR resulting in nested NEMO (NeNEMO). The nesting can be multi-level too in the worst cases. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to analyze NEMO BSP in NeNEMO situation for determining its handoff delay and throughput. Our numerical analysis reveals that the handoff delay increases linearly with nesting levels, while throughput decreases sharply with an increase in the number of levels. Since this fact entails in deterioration in the application performance, it is important to decide on how many nesting levels NEMO BSP should allow such that both handoff delay and throughput do not suffer severely. We observe graphically that the maximum nesting level should not go beyond 2 for typical network configurations.