PCLF: A Practical Cross-Layer Fast Handover Mechanism in IEEE 802.11 WLANs

As is known to us, the handover latency of FMIPv6 in its predictive mode is given little concerns. However our previous work [4] shows that FMIPv6 may suffer long handover latency in its predictive mode, and [4] identifies three key issues raising such problems. In this paper, we propose a practical cross-layer fast handover management mechanism (PCLF) to address these issues and improve success rate of mobility prediction. To solve the problem, PCLF includes a smart link layer trigger, a TBScan algorithm, a TBAPS algorithm, a buffering support Bi-Binding scheme and the smart link event notification policy. Experiment results show that our mechanism can achieve reasonable mobility prediction and seamless handover with no interruptions on upper layer applications (VoIP) in IEEE 802.11 WLANs. The average handover latency is less than 50ms, the success rate of mobility prediction is 97.7% and no packet loss is observed.