SIP Paging and Tracking of Wireless LAN Hosts for VoIP

This paper introduces a new paging technique to track and wake up a mobile node (MN) attached to an access point (AP) in a wireless LAN network after a session initiation protocol (SIP) INVITE message is initiated by a caller. A tracking agent (TA) keeps track of the mobiles' handoffs between the APs. A paging agent (PA) triggers the TA to page the mobile when a SIP INVITE is received for one of its users. The context transfer feature of our paging protocol allows the paging messages to deliver the station context in order to enable faster session reestablishment. The AP then does onlink paging in a wireless link. SIP extensions are needed to trigger the PA to start paging MNs to notify their dormant status using an extended SIP REGISTER method. Tracking protocol is analyzed to compare soft- and hard-state approaches for state inconsistency ratio, message rate, and the overall cost. The simulation model we developed enables us to evaluate the traffic introduced by the tracking protocol and the cache (state) size. Paging protocol is analyzed for CPU processing times and the transmission delays in the SIP session setup with paging. Simulation of the paging with context transfer is used to show the gains in reauthentication.