A user-based frequency-dependent IP header compression architecture

Due to bandwidth constraints on the wireless link in an IP network, it is useful to compress the headers so as to maximize the utilization of the link. There exist Header compression algorithms that make use of the similarity in consecutive headers in a packet flow to compress these headers. We introduce a novel header compression scheme that makes use of the similarity in consecutive flows from or to a given mobile terminal to compress these headers. We also introduce an architecture to distribute the information necessary for our header compression scheme to the network entities participating in the header compression by means of context transfer. We evaluate our compression scheme with respect to an analytical model and to actual Internet data traces. Our scheme is complementary and the benefits are additional to the traditional approach to header compression.