Handover Delay in Mobile WiMAX: A Simulation Study

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) deployment is growing at a rapid pace. Since Mobile WiMAX has the key advantage of serving large coverage areas per base station, it has become a popular emerging technology for handling mobile clients. However, serving a large number of Mobile Stations (MS) in practice requires an efficient handover scheme. Currently, mobile WiMAX has a long handover delay that contributes to the overall end-to-end communication delay. Recent research is focusing on increasing the efficiency of hand over schemes. In this paper, we analyse the performance of the two standardised handover schemes, namely the Mobile IP and the ASN-based Network Mobility (ABNM), in mobile WiMAX using simulation. Our results clearly indicate that ABNM is more efficient for handover in terms of handover delay and throughput.