To support multimedia applications effectively in mobile networks, the handover latency or packet losses during handover should be very small. Addressing this issue, we present a cooperative mobile router-based handover (CoMoRoHo) scheme for long-vehicular multihomed mobile networks. The basic idea behind CoMoRoHo is to enable different mobile routers to access different subnets during a handover and cooperatively receive packets destined for each other. In general, packet losses are directly proportional to handover latency; however, the overlapped reception of packets from different subnets makes possible to minimize packet losses even without reducing handover latency. To evaluate the scheme, we carried out performance modeling of the CoMoRoHo scheme in comparison with the Fast Handover for Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) protocol in regard to the handover latency, packet loss, signaling overhead, and packet delivery overhead in access networks. The analysis results show that CoMoRoHo outperforms FMIPv6 by reducing the packet losses as well as signaling overheads by more than 50%. Moreover, CoMoRoHo imposes lower packet delivery overheads required for preventing packets from being dropped from access routers. We thus conclude that CoMoRoHo is a scalable scheme because its performance remains intact even when the access network is overloaded.

In this paper an adjacent channel interference (ACI) cancellation scheme with undersampling for multi-channel reception is proposed and investigated. Low-IF receiver architecture is used in the multi-channel reception scheme. In this system, signal in the adjacent channel causes interference to the desired signal. The ACI cancellation scheme with analog filter bank has been proposed to mitigate the influence from the adjacent channel [10]. Undersampling technique is applied in this system in order to lower the required sampling frequency and power consumption. The effects of the adjacent channel to the undersampling technique in this scheme is examined and discussed.

The fast handover protocol adopted in a IPv6 hierarchical structure provides a seamless handover in wireless IP networks by minimizing the handover latency. To reduce the handover latency, the fast handover uses anticipation based on layer 2 trigger. Nonetheless, a mobile node can still lose its connection with the old link during the fast handover procedures. Accordingly, this paper analyzes the handover latency and packet delivery costs associated with fast handover failure cases based on a timing diagram.

In this paper, we propose a framework that provides users with personalized interfaces by sharing user-centric context between real and virtual environments. The proposed framework consists of ubi-UCAM for generating user's contexts, NAVER for managing virtual environment, and rv-Interface for linking ubi-UCAM with NAVER. Firstly, personalized interface helps users to concentrate on their tasks of interest by reducing burdensome menu selections according to user's context. In addition, user-adaptive contents based on user's preferences allow more pleasure personal experiences. Finally, personalized interface with context hand-over mechanism enables users to continuously interact with virtual environments, even if the users move around. According to experimental results, we expect that the proposed framework can play an important role for realizing user-centric VR applications by exploiting personalized interface that adapts to user-centric context.

The next-generation wireless networks will bring users with Software Defined Radio (SDR) terminals seamless mobility and ubiquitous computing through heterogeneous networks. This paper proposes a soft-prioritization based system selection algorithm performed by SDR terminal and investigates the effectiveness of the soft-prioritization based system selection by using a concrete simulation model. To maximize the quality of service (QoS), wireless communication systems are prioritized on the basis of criteria for system selection such as data rate, channel quality and cost, and should be dynamically changed. However, frequent inter-system handovers based on hard-prioritization are undesirable in view of interrupting and dropping, particularly for real-time traffic and managing channel capacities. Wireless communication systems are softly prioritized in the soft-prioritization based system selection algorithm, and therefore inter-system handovers between systems with the same priority aren't initiated. To elucidate the validity of the soft-prioritization based system selection algorithm, a system simulation model consisting of five wireless communication systems is employed. Simulation results confirm that the soft-prioritization system selection algorithm offers higher performance in terms of the number of inter-system handovers and throughput of best effort traffic.

Mobile devices with the ability to access IEEE 802.3, 802.11, 802.16 and cellular networks in various combinations are driving the need for seamless session continuity and IP address continuity when transitioning between these networks. An approach to facilitating service transition based on triggering and providing network detection and selection assistance is being followed in the IEEE 802.21 working group. This paper presents some of the issues and proposed approaches.

One of the main issues of Mobile IPv6 is handover latency that causes service disruption time. Although plenty of proposals significantly reduce the service disruption time, they suffer from redundant routing that causes packet misordering and bandwidth consumption during the process of inter-domain handover. In this paper, we propose a new scheme that minimizes the redundant routing during the process of inter-domain handover by utilizing forwarding routers for each correspondent node. Our proposed scheme consists of forwarding router discovery and proactive handover. We evaluate our proposed scheme in the view of packet misordering and bandwidth consumption, and clarify the efficiency of our proposed scheme. We also evaluate the impact of the forwarding routers' capacity since routers have limited resources. By strategically locating forwarding routers, e.g. next to the router that has peering to another domain, the redundant routing caused by inter-domain handover will be efficiently suppressed.

A Realization of mobile All-IP networks calls not only for seamless handover protocols, but also fast processing, especially for real-time IP traffic flows. In this paper, we propose to exploit pre-established label switched paths with the aim to reduce handover processing latency which is one of the most critical performance metrics in micro-mobility environment. Thus, our proposed scheme has an advantage of offering micro-mobility to Mobile IP (MIP) with lower-latency handover as compared with the several existing MPLS-based MIP approaches. A detailed analytic model of setting up LSPs for fast handover processing is presented. Further, we do not only investigate the performance of our model but also propose detailed signaling steps so that our proposed scheme could be run on MPLS-based MIP system.

Multipath propagation of radio signal introduces frequency selectivity. OFDMA systems greatly suffer from frequency selective fading. It is an important limit factor of performance of OFDMA systems, especially in subband based multiple user access scehems. In this paper, we propose the method of subband selection and handover to improve the system performance over the frequency selective channel. Two subband selection algorithms are presented to accurately select the subband with high channel gain and avoid the channel notch. The random access procedure employing subband selection is presented as an example. The effects of the subband selection are also given. The selection effectively improves the performances of frame synchronization, frequency synchronization, channel estimation, and bit error rate (BER). The investigations show that the proposed scheme is promising to reliable communications over frequency selective fading channel.

In order to apply the mobile multimedia communication to the road information system, a seamless handover scheme is needed. Therefore, we present a novel micro-mobility scheme based on explicit multicast (Xcast) in this article. In our proposal, the mobile traffic of its forward direction is sent to the potential access routers of a mobile node (MN) by including IP addresses of the access routers explicitly in the IP headers. As for 802.11 wireless LAN, because it is difficult to know the potential ARs of a mobile node, a new trigger, called as the Candidate AR Trigger (CAT), is introduced to get this information from the link layer. The handover mechanism of our proposed scheme is depicted in detail and the merits of this scheme are also discussed. Finally, by using a combination of performance evaluation and simulation, we argue that our architecture is capable of providing seamless handover while introducing limited network overhead.

In the mobile Internet, a handover brings significant performance degradation of TCP due to bursty packet losses during handover processing. In this paper, we propose a new bandwidth control for improving the TCP performance. In the proposed system, when a mobile node changes its accessing base station, an intermediate router suppresses an available bandwidth to the corresponding TCP flow. Because suppressing the bandwidth results in reducing mis-forwarded packets to the old base station, the bursty packet losses can be avoided. In the hierarchical mobile network structure, which is recently developed in order to realize micro-mobility protocol, all packets transferred to mobile nodes are converged to several gateways such as mobility anchor points (MAP) in hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6). Therefore, the proposed system is suited to the hierarchical structure because it can be easily implemented at such gateways. Computer simulation results show that the proposed system can improve the TCP performance degradation especially in a situation where handovers frequently occur.

This paper proposes cell selection (CS) based on shadowing variation for the forward-link Orthogonal Frequency and Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) packet wireless access. We clarify its effects using a broadband propagation channel model in a comparison with fast cell selection (FCS), which tracks the instantaneous fading variation, and with the conventional slow CS, which tracks only the distance-dependent path loss, based on radio link level simulations that take into account time-varying instantaneous fading and shadowing variations. The simulation results show that the achievable throughput with FCS improves slightly in a broadband channel with an increasing number of paths when the average path-loss difference between two cells is greater than 2 dB. Nevertheless, we show that the optimum CS interval becomes approximately 100 msec, because the interval can track the time-varying shadowing variation considering low-to-high mobility up to the maximum Doppler frequency of 200 Hz. Consequently, we show that the throughput by employing the CS based on shadowing variation with the selection interval of 100 msec is increased by approximately 5 and 15% compared to that using the conventional slow CS with the selection interval of 1 sec, for the maximum Doppler frequency of 20 and 200 Hz, respectively.

This paper presents experimental results of a future road-to-vehicle communications system with handover function. The proposed handover scheme, based on the current Dedicated Short Range Communication System (DSRC) standard (ARIB STD-T75) in Japan, maintains the continuity of data transmissions over multiple radio zones by transferring received and remaining data between base stations located along the roadside. Moreover, a link connection/disconnection method is newly proposed to avoid repetition of link connection and disconnections around the cell entrance and to actualize smooth handover between cells. The proposed method determines the link connection and disconnection timing by measuring the received signal strength and observing the results of CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Code) error checks of the control channel. By applying the proposed method to mobile stations (MS) in the DSRC system, the communication link between the MS and the base station (BS) can be smoothly connected. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance and validity of the proposed methods using actual equipment. Experimental results show that the proposed methods perform a smooth link connection between cells and achieve a very short handover processing delay of less than 42 milliseconds.

In this article we propose a new framework to support QoS and 4G enabled mobility management. The key feature of this framework is twofold; the Policy based Handover control, and the adaptive handover mechanisms. On one hand, the adaptive handover mechanism will allow the selection of different handover schemes based on the user service level specification in order to differentiate the handover quality provided for the required service level, thus optimizing the network resources usage and providing the agreed service level to users. On the other hand, the proposed handover control mechanism considers resource availability and other constraints during the handover decision in order to provide support for QoS aware mobility on the contrary of the classical naïve mobility management that considers only signal strength fading. This decision mechanism will provide mainly the interaction between the mobility and QoS management frameworks but also a 4G handover control. In addition, the QoS aware handover will provide the knowledge necessary to achieve a proactive handover's procedures control.

In wireless environment, TCP suffers from significant performance degradation due to bit errors on wireless link and handovers because it responds to all packet losses by invoking congestion control even though packet losses are not related to congestion. Several schemes have been proposed to improve the performance degradation due to each cause. They have been evaluated in a specific network environment where either bit errors or handover occurs, i.e. they do not occur at the same time. In this paper, we reveal the packet recovery mismatch problem in an environment where both of bit errors and handover can cause the performance degradation. We pick up one scenario that TCP traffic is transmitted in the situation that ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) and packet forwarding are implemented together. They are proposed to reduce the influence of bit errors and handover respectively and are natural approaches from the viewpoint of protocol layering. Computer simulation shows that in that scenario both techniques cannot perform efficiently due to interaction of each other. We also propose two buffer control approaches to resolve the packet recovery mismatch problem in our scenario according to applicability of cross-layer operation between layer 2 and layer 3.

The next-generation IP-based mobile network must accommodate various kinds of wireless access technologies, including W-CDMA. Although the soft handover technique should be supported if W-CDMA is used, redundant paths will be created by the soft handover scheme employed by the 3rd generation mobile communication system. This paper proposes the Network Distributed Soft Handover (NDSHO) method, which achieves soft handover control in an IP network but without any redundant paths. NDSHO continuously optimizes all routing paths by relocating the data copy point dynamically during communication according to the movement of the mobile terminal. To achieve the proposed method, this paper introduces a copy point seamless relocation method and an optimal point selection method which takes advantage of OSPF. Furthermore, we show quantitatively that NDSHO makes more efficient use of system resources than the 3rd generation system.

Three representative protocols are proposed to support mobility for IPv6 in IETF: Mobile IPv6, Hierarchical Mobile IPv6, and Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6. Recently, IEEE 802.11 network has been widely deployed in public areas for mobile Internet services. In the near future, IPv6 mobility support over IEEE 802.11 network is expected to be a key function to actualize the pure IP-based mobile multimedia service. The IPv6 mobility support protocols have their characteristics in terms of signaling, handover latency, lost packets, and required buffer size. In this paper, we analyze the performance of the protocols over IEEE 802.11 network. We define a packet-level traffic model and a system and mobility model. Then, we construct a framework for the performance analysis. We also make cost functions to formalize each protocol's performance. Lastly, we investigate the effect of varying parameters used to show diverse numerical results.

We propose a novel handover initiation algorithm based on available bit rate and timing constraint criterion for multimedia capable cellular systems. Computer simulations are performed to evaluate the handover rate and handover initiation delay. Numerical results show that handover must be initiated at different positions for different services to maintain the required quality of service requirements.

Next generation wired/wireless networks will be based on IP technology. In the IP based networks, it is crucially required to support seamless mobility especially for proving real-time services in the mobile environment. The conventional Mobile IP protocols cannot satisfy such seamless mobility requirements for real-time services. Therefore various extensions of Mobile IP are being proposed. In this paper, we propose a new handover scheme to enhance the existing tunnel-based fast handover method, which is a typical Mobile IP extension to support seamless mobility. It is shown that the proposed method reduces the traffic overhead in the networks. It is expected that the proposed method will be particularly useful in the IP-based networks in which there are a number of users simultaneously using the long-lived real-time services, or in the condition that the traffic overhead is considered as a critical performance measure.

Uplink synchronous transmission has been proposed to improve the uplink capacity of DS-CDMA systems by means of canceling interference from the main paths of other intra-cell users. A significant capacity gain has been reported in a single cell environment. This Letter further investigates the uplink capacity in a multiple cell environment, where two crucial factors are taken into account, namely code shortage problem and soft handover. The impacts of the target Eb/Io and the other-to-own cell interference ratio, together with the number of channelisation codes, are discussed mathematically and then, confirmed through system level simulations with more realistic parameters.