Design considerations for mobility management in future infrastructure networks

Mobile networks based on large-scale, global infrastructures have dominated telecommunications development over the past two decades. Meanwhile, mobility management has been a very active R&D area, in particular for infrastructure networks. Today, as data traffic dominates telecommunication networks and mobile broadband becomes common, mobility management needs to evolve by re-examining key architectural assumptions. We review recent advances in mobility management for infrastructure networks, considering both centralized and distributed approaches while focusing primarily on macro- mobility. After presenting the key evolution steps, we pinpoint the main technological and socio-economic trends and detail our design considerations for mobility management in future infrastructure networks which can competently tackle the new challenges and allow the mobile network operator to retain full control of the end-user experience.