Performance analysis on IP- based soft handover across ALL-IP wireless networks

Mobile users are facing the fact that many heterogenous radio access technologies coexist, ranging from wireless LANs to cellular systems. No technology has emerged as common and universal solution which makes the current trends today toward design of All-IP wireless networks, where radio cells are under the control of IP Access Routers for signalling and data transmission. In such as networks, an IP-device with multiple radio interfaces or software radio can roam between different radio networks regardless the heterogeneity of radio access technologies. The design of an All-IP wireless network requires an efficient and flexible IP-based handover management, and a major issue in handover control is how to reduce data loss and avoid additional end to end transmission delay. In this paper we propose and evaluate mechanisms to handle soft-handover management in IP layer over heterogenous networks. Those mechanisms coexist with Mobile IPv6 and allow efficient micro mobility management.