Abstract:
In Next-Generation (NG) wireless networks, hybrid
handover techniques are expected to enable the
integration of heterogeneous networks, e.g. 3G cellular
networks and 802.11 Wireless LAN (WLAN). Media
Independent Handover (MIH) has begun to be
discussed in the latest IEEE 802.21 to accommodate
multiple disparate interfaces in mobile handset.
Multiple interfaces can come in a variety of ways to
facilitate hybrid handover, and may result in different
requirements on protocols and performance. In this
paper, we classify multi-interface schemes for
handover in heterogeneous wireless networks. We
propose a multi-interface scheme for IEEE 802.21
MIH. The scheme is proposed to be able to work with
standard TCP and Mobile IPv4 agent routers without
particular configuration. Based on this scheme, we
implemented a dual-interface Mobile Host (MH) model
in Network Simulation 2 (ns2) to evaluate how it
performs in comparison with single-interface MH.
