An efficient inter-domain handover scheme with minimized latency for PMIPv6

Although PMIPv6 was designed to provide network-based mobility, it has a limitation in that MNs (Mobile Nodes) can perform handover only within a local domain. This paper proposes a novel inter-PMIPv6-domain handover scheme that extends the handover capability of PMIPv6 to the inter-domain level. The proposed scheme minimizes the inter-domain handover latency by introducing the overlapping MAG (OMAG) and the boundary MAG (BMAG) in the cell planning stage. It further reduces the handover latency by utilizing a fast IPv6 address generation and verification method called the Pseudocode Generation & Verification Algorithm (PGVA). Finally, since it is an extension of PMIPv6, it retains the benefits of this method, such as the freeing up of the MN during any mobility activities and the removal of the tunneling overheads in the access network. In this approach, two inter-domain handover protocols called No-Gap and Reactive are proposed. To evaluate their performances, comparisons are made with MIPv6, FMIPv6, I. PMIPv6 and EIPMH using mathematical models. The performance results show that the proposed scheme outperforms those existing inter-domain handover methods in terms of the handover latency.