Handoff latency improvement using multicasting schemes in heterogeneous networks

Next generation wireless networks are characterized as heterogeneous networks, particularly in terms of its underlying technology. One of the challenges of these heterogeneous networks is to manage handoff. Mobile IP is chosen for managing the handoff to accommodate the all-IP vision of the future interconnected networks. However, the handoff management of the mobile IP is mainly for data services where delay is not of a major concern. Therefore, it would be considerable challenge to achieve low latency handoff for real-time services. In this paper, we propose a multicasting scheme for delay-sensitive applications. The proposed scheme is shown to reduce the latency introduced during the process of mobile IP-based handoff between heterogeneous networks. For low data rate applications, in which real-time voice services operate, the proposed scheme implements an adaptive packet size technique to reduce both the probability of packet loss and the handoff latency. We present simulation results to verify the improvements achieved using the proposed multicasting scheme as opposed to the standard mobile IP