Network enablers for enhanced mobility management

Abstract

The proliferation of network access technologies and the increased mobility of end users bring new challenges to operators who are willing to support their subscribers with seamless and context-aware services. This paper reviews the requirements that these challenges generate, focusing on the issues that are not entirely addressed by existing mobility protocols, the IMS set of specifications or by the IEEE802.21 standardisation efforts. A set of network enablers for enhanced mobility management addressing these issues is then proposed with an explanation of their positioning within future IMS-based mobility architectures. IntroductionIn recent years, faced with declining revenues in the traditional voice calls market, telecommunications operators have sought to find new business opportunities to grow revenues and counter the threat of commoditisation of network traffic.One such new opportunity that has emerged is that of converged services. These are services which need to reach the users regardless of whether they are at a fixed location or accessing the network through various access technologies while on the move.The current industry de facto mobility architecture poised to enable new revenues is the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). Created by the 3GPP to evolve circuitswitched networks to support packet-switched applications, the IMS allows separation of session control from data transport. Its operations are complemented by a number of protocols from the Internet community (e.g. Mobile-IP, SIP) which support terminal/session mobility. These protocols, designed as a patch to enhance fixed IP networks, while supporting some mobile users' requirements, also impose limitations that can often prevent service continuity.As a result, existing converged service solutions fall short of providing a guaranteed seamless handover experience as the comprehensive information required to support the handover decisions is not available to the service. The IEEE802.21 standard aims to improve the support by enlarging the information space considered during handover, limiting the more dynamic information to radio signal level triggers. These triggers are increasingly inadequate, especially when considering ubiquitous networking scenarios which, coupled with increased availability of devices, offer a number of alternatives for the best delivery of individual services given the current user/ device/network context.It is argued in this paper therefore, that further enhancements, namely the use of information elements which are more dynamic and originate in different layers and which represent user, service and network context, can greatly benefit the operations of a network-based mobility management capability. This paper is divided into a number of sections. Section 2 illustrates the main requirements that future mobility architectures need to support; it then shows how current standards-based specifications address some aspects of those requirements and highlights a number of unresolved issues. Section 3 proposes selected solution...

Context-aware systems: A literature review and classification

“…,Boukerche, Pazzi, and Araujo (2006),Chen and Mohapatra (2005),Friday et al (2003),Giaffreda, de Carvalho, Melia, Giaffreda, and de Carvalho (2007),Kellerer, Wagner, Balke, and Schulzrinne (2004),Lin, Tsai, and Lai (2005),Singh and Acharya (2005),Tyan and Mahmoud (2005),Yau and Karim (2003),Zhu et al (2005) Handoff management…”

Methods of implementation of context-aware platforms and context-aware user interfaces for applications in consumer electronics

“…Za potrebe povezivanja koriste se različiti mrežni protokoli. Osnovni zahtevi mrežnog protokola navedeni u većini dosadašnjih istraživanja obuhvataju sledeće: (1) iniciranje i kontrolu komunikacije izmeñu tačaka; (2) kreiranje mobilne ad-hok mreže niske potrošnje energije za povezivanje velikog broja ureñaja malih dimenzija i (3) automatsko otkrivanje ureñaja u mreži (Friday, 2003;Yau, 2003;Kellerer, 2004;Chen, 2005;Lin, 2005;Tyan, 2005;Zhu, 2005;Benedetto, 2006;Boukerche, 2006;Giaffreda, 2007;Wood, 2008;.…”

IP Converged Heterogeneous Mobility in 4G networks - Network-side Handover Management Strategies

“…That is, quality and continuity of the offered services are not a nice add on rather primary requirements to be fulfilled, else compromising network deployments and revenues of mobile operators. It has been already identified [1] that the support of policy control (e.g. mobility) designed for 3G networks presents shortcomings when applied to heterogeneous wireless access.…”

“…The standard includes the design of components residing in the mobile node and in network and it specifies the required protocol operations for information exchange. Starting from the IEEE 802.21 1 , the work presented in this document focuses on the evaluation of a framework for network initiated and controlled handovers in an IP-based heterogeneous wireless access scenario. The extensive simulation study aims at identifying possibilities and challenges of network controlled an initiated handovers highlighting the requirements for future 4G networks design.…”

“…That is, starting from the analysis of mobility procedures in 2G and 3G networks we present solutions on how to support comparable procedures in a multi wireless heterogeneous environment for end to end IP-based seamless services delivery. The results obtained have been published in several international conferences [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [1], [10], [11] and have been input to both IEEE and IETF standardization bodies. The appendix A summarizes the technical content of the contributions not explicitly described in the main body of the thesis being format and syntax too specific to the related standardization body.…”