Handoff Management Relying on RFID Technology

Handoff management is the main research challenge encountered for providing mobility support over the wireless Internet. Actually, during the migration of a mobile node (MN) among different network domains, its IP traffic is interrupted due to the latency delay introduced by the handoff process. The main source of such latency is attributed to the Movement Detection (MD) stage, whereby the MN becomes aware of its new IP network. In this paper, we propose a novel MD scheme relying on the Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technology aiming to reduce this latency. The main concept of our proposal is to predict the next point of attachment (PoA) of an RFID-enabled MN by using topology information provided by the network with the collaboration of an RFID system. The proposed scheme is fast, introduces low message overhead and is independent of the underlying radio access technology. An analytical model for its time behavior is firstly derived and finally simulation-based results validate its performance in detecting fast and accurately the MN´s movement.