On providing mobility management in WOBANs: Integration with PMIPv6 and MIH

Abstract

The Wireless-Optical Broadband Access Network(WOBAN) is a promising access architecture that combines the high performance of optical networks with the ubiquity and convenience of wireless technologies. This article proposes a network based mobility framework that is specially tailored for WOBANs. The proposed architecture is based on Proxy Mobile IPv6 and IEEE 802.21 mobility management protocols, but it also defines a number of optimizations that enable the seamless handover of mobile nodes. In particular, the hierarchical architecture together with the broadcast-and-select nature of the optical part of the WOBAN are leveraged to: i) optimize the mobility of users with respect to the overall network resources, both at the wireless access and optical distribution parts, ii) remove the overhead of IP-in-IP tunneling between the PMIPv6 entities, and iii) perform an efficient bicasting during the handover process to minimize packet loss.