Media Independent Handover Management in Heterogeneous Access Networks - An Empirical Evaluation

The growth of available broadband access technologies has brought an enormous challenge for operators wanting to ensure seamless mobility to its customers in heterogeneous environments. In this paper we present an enhanced Mobility Management entity focused on a real heterogeneous environments and based on IEEE802.21 standard. This entity is capable to perform terminal and handover management regardless the access technology used. This entity was deployed in a real heterogeneous environment with Wi-Fi, WiMAX and HSPA using an Android smartphone. In order to provide Layer 3 mobility support it was integrated with a modified version of MIPv6. The results show not only the impact of a centralized entity to manage vertical handovers, but also the performance of IEEE802.21 protocol in a real scenario with a real implementation.