Performance evaluation of vertical handover for IEEE 802.21 enabled Proxy Mobile IPv6

Nowadays, networks are large heterogeneous systems in which efficient and effective support for multi-access technologies is imperative. The enhanced performance and availability of various technologies like WiFi, WiMax, and UMTS have motivated network users towards increased utilization. In these heterogeneous networks, a seamless connectivity with acceptable level of quality should be maintained during vertical handovers. In recent years, a network based mobility solution, Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) has been considered as one of the effective IP mobility management protocol. Its performance and efficiency during handover can be further increased by combining IEEE 802.21 with it. Few research efforts have been done in this domain to evaluate the performance of IEEE 802.21 with PMIPv6. However, these efforts are focused on the theoretical work and have not been supported with detailed experiments. In this paper, a thorough simulation study is conducted to evaluate the performance of vertical handover with respect to handover latency, packet loss, and average throughput during handover. Our simulation analysis shows that IEEE 802.21 enabled PMIPv6 has better performance than PMIPv6 alone.