Mobility management is a core issue in IP/LEO satellite network related research. The LEO system consists of wide network of moving satellites providing connectivity to any place on the earth. It implies that the system must support numerous wireless connections under high-mobility conditions. Existing mobility management protocols like Mobile IP suppose that two types of identities, indicating a unique name and position in the network, are dynamically bound in each handover. However, in the IP/LEO system, handovers are mainly caused by fast moving satellites, not moving nodes. As a result, quite a few binding update requests are generated during a short period by the moving satellites; this makes mobility management difficult. In this paper, we propose a new mobility management method that separates binding updates from handovers by using geographical location of the nodes. We evaluate the proposed method and show its effectiveness.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite constellations have been proposed in recent years to provide broadband network access. This research focuses on Walker Delta type constellation. Walker Delta has overlapping ascending and descending orbits. Although Inter Satellite Links (ISLs) can be utilized between satellites orbiting in the same direction, ISLs cannot be utilized between satellites orbiting in opposite directions. As a result, a Walker Delta Constellation with ISLs has two locally separate overlapping meshes, an ascending and a descending mesh. To reach from one local mesh to the other, the traffic has to pass through the highest latitude intra-plane ISLs. Therefore the propagation delay between terminals connected to different meshes is greater than between terminals connected to the same mesh. Due to characteristic handover of LEO satellites, terminals can connect to a satellite in the other mesh during communication, causing drastic variation of propagation delay which results in degradation of communication quality. These issues can be solved by continuously connecting the communication terminals to the same mesh. In this paper, a satellite selection method for Walker Delta Constellations with double mesh coverage is proposed. It employs geographical location information of the communicating terminals, to connect them to the same mesh. In addition, the proposed method selects the mesh that minimize propagation delay for that communication session. It is shown through simulation that the proposed method is effective in reducing delay and jitter for a connection while improving overall communication quality of the network.