In this thesis, we focus on challenges to support Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) in heterogeneous wireless networks, of which the topology can be statically defined but more likely to be arbitrary and organized as spontaneous wireless mesh networks. We first propose the cluster-based architecture to scale up the network. Subsequently, we propose an extension to PMIPv6 for scalability support in large wireless networks in a cluster-based manner. We have evaluated the scalability of our framework, called Scalable Proxy Mobile IPv6 (SPMIPv6), in a wireless mesh network context. A mathematical model has been used to investigate the scalability of the framework with consideration of the wireless mesh network size, mobile node density, and average mobile speed. Furthermore, we introduce route optimization support into the SPMIPv6 framework, and then propose an enhanced IP-Layer network-based movement detection mechanism to deal with an environment employing heterogeneous radio access technologies. In order to evaluate the performance of these extensions, we implement all these propositions under Linux. We setup both virtual and real wireless mesh testbeds and run each in different scenarios to evaluate important information, such as signaling cost, handover latency, packets loss, Round Trip Time (RTT), and TCP throughput. Finally, we address the multi-homing context by proposing a virtual Stream Control Transmission Protocol (vSCTP) tunneling method, which is beneficial for both users and operators with wireless bandwidth aggregation and load balancing scenarios.
