RSVP mobility support: a signaling protocol for integrated services Internet with mobile hosts

The resource reservation mechanism is essential for QoS provisioning in integrated services networks. The resource reservation protocol (RSVP) is a receiver oriented resource reservation protocol, and an Internet standard approved by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). However, the RSVP designed for the fixed network has been facing a great challenge owing to the participation of wireless networks. In this paper, we describe a new signaling protocol for mobile hosts to reserve resources in the integrated services Internet. Under our approach, we extend the RSVP model based on IP multicast to support mobile hosts. The mobility of a host is modeled as a transition in multicast group membership. Provision of QoS in wireless networks is more complex than in wired networks due to user mobility. To overcome the mobility impact on service guarantees, mobile hosts need to make resource reservation in advance at the locations it may visit during the lifetime of the connections. These locations become the leaves of the multicast tree in our design. To obtain more efficient use of scarce wireless bandwidth, we propose the extended reservation model. A mobile proxy in a cell is required to manage resource reservations and other mobility related tasks on behalf of mobile hosts. The mobility impacts on packet delay, bandwidth utilization and packet loss rate are investigated via simulations