Multi-hop discovery of Candidate Access Routers (MHD-CAR) for fast moving mobile nodes

Seamless IP mobility protocols like Fast Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) requires the knowledge of candidate access routers, to which the mobile node will hand over its connection to, well in advance while the mobile node is still connected to its current AR. The candidate access router discovery (CARD) protocol is one such protocol that provides the identity and capabilities information of the candidate access routers to the mobile node prior to the initiation of handover. The CARD protocol, however, specifies a very generic mechanism and it does not take into account the stringent requirements of fast moving mobile nodes and real time communication sessions. In this paper we present an enhanced mechanism that can enable a fast moving mobile node to discover the identity and capabilities of the candidate access routers which may be adjacent geographically but not topologically to its current access router.