Modeling user mobility for reliable packet delivery in mobile IP networks

We analyze the handoff behavior for reliable packet delivery in mobile IP networks. In mobile IP, packets destined to roaming hosts are intercepted by their home agents and delivered via tunneling to its care of address (CoA). A mobile node may roam across multiple subnets during receiving data reliably. Upon each boundary crossing, a handoff is initiated in which the CoA is updated and a new tunnel is established. We find that reliable packet delivery in mobile IP networks can be modeled as a renewal process. We derive the probability distribution of boundary crossings for each successfully transmitted packet. We also provide numerical examples to demonstrate how to use our model to calculate the probability distribution of boundary crossings, given the distributions of residence time and local retransmission attempts.