Quality of Service Issues in Micro Mobility Enabled Wireless Access Networks

Abstract

Provision of Quality of Service (QoS) and Micro Mobility management is imperative to delivering content seamlessly and efficiently to the next generation of IP based mobile networks. Micro mobility management ensures that during handover the disruption caused to the live sessions are kept to a minimum. On the other hand, QoS mechanisms ensure that during a session the required level of service is maintained. Though many micro mobility and QoS mechanisms have been proposed to solve their respective aspects of network operation, they often have interaction with each other and can lead towards network performance degradation. This chapter focuses specifically on the issues of interaction between micro mobility and QoS mechanisms. Special focus is given to the relatively unexplored area of the impact Mobility Agents can have on the wireless access network. Mobility Agents play a central role in providing micro mobility support. However, their presence (location and number) can affect the routing as well as the handover delay. Through an example network this issue is highlighted. Following which an optimization framework is proposed to deploy Mobility Agents optimally within a micro mobility enabled wireless access network to minimise both the routing overhead as well as the handover delay. Results show considerable improvements in comparison to deploying the Mobility Agents arbitrarily.