Modeling node mobility for reliable packet delivery in mobile ip networks

In this paper, we analyze node mobility for reliable packet delivery in mobile IP networks. In mobile IP, packets destined to roaming nodes are intercepted by their home agents and delivered via tunneling to their care of addresses (CoA). A mobile node may roam across multiple subnets. At each boundary crossing, a handoff is initiated such that the CoA is updated and a new tunnel is established. We consider both basic mobile IP handoff and smooth handoff. We find that reliable packet delivery in mobile IP networks can be modeled as a renewal process, because the retransmission over a new tunnel after each boundary crossing is independent of the previous history. We then derive the probability distribution of boundary crossings for each successful packet, based on which the packet reliable delivery time can be obtained. Our analytical model is derived based on a general distribution of residence time in a subnet and a general distribution of successful retransmission attempts in each subnet. The results can be readily applied to any distributions for both items. We also provide numerical examples to calculate the probability distribution of boundary crossings, and conduct simulations to validate our analytical results