IP micro-mobility protocols

Pierre Reinbold

Olivier Bonaventure

University of Namur
Belgium
pre@info.fundp.ac.be

Universite Catholique de Louvain

(UCL), Belgium
Bonaventure@info.ucl.ac.be

http://www.infonet.fundp.ac.be

http://www.info.ucl.ac.be

March 2003

Abstract
Wireless cellular networks are quickly evolving towards broadband wireless access networks, going from 2G,
classical telephony networks such as Global System for Mobile communication (GSM), towards 3G and beyond,
with, for example, Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). At the same time, these networks are
also moving towards all-IP networks. In this paper, we first describe the global mobility landscape for these future networks. This landscape is designed to be as generic as possible to allow us to compare several IP mobility
management proposals with very different characteristics. We illustrate the utilization of this landscape with a short
presentation of the mobility management in General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) networks (at the IP level) and of
UMTS. Then, we point out and describe the important issues that must be addressed to manage mobile nodes. These
issues include mainly handoff management, the support of Passive Connectivity and Paging, Scalability and Robustness. Within this framework, we examine Mobile IP as a first IP mobility management protocol. We present then the
well-known distinction between macro-mobility and micro-mobility and the advantages of this approach. Finally, we
compare seven of the recently proposed IP micro-mobility protocols: Hierarchical Mobile IP, Proactive Handoff, Fast
Handoff, Telecommunication-Enhanced Mobile IP Architecture (TeleMIP), Cellular IP, HAWAII, and Edge Mobility
Architecture (EMA).
Keywords

Mobile IP, Wireless networks, micro-mobility, macro-mobility, IP mobility

1 Introduction
Todays wireless cellular networks are largely based on circuit switching technologies and are optimized to carry voice
traffic. Some extensions to these networks such as GPRS [19] are currently being deployed to better support data traffic
such as Internet access. Future broadband wireless networks such as the fourth generation (4G) networks for example
will rely on packet switching technologies and will be entirely based on the IP protocol suite, both in the wireless and
the wired parts of the network. Since IP was not designed with mobility in mind, there are several problems that need
to be solved before all-IP wireless networks are deployed.
A first problem to be addressed is that inside an IP network an IP address is used to identify both a node and
its location. Thus, when a mobile node moves inside the network, its IP address must change. This problem has
been addressed by several proposals such as Mobile IP [2]. Mobile IP offers a mechanism that allows mobile nodes
to change their point of attachment (and thus their IP address) inside the network. However, when Mobile IP was
designed, all-IP wireless networks were not envisionned and some of the mechanisms used by Mobile IP are not wellsuited for such networks. For example, it can be expected that voice will remain an important service in broadband
wireless networks. To efficiently support voice over IP, the network will have to provide a low delay and a low delay

Most of the work was done while the author was with the University of Namur.

jitter to the voice packets. These low delays will have to be provided even while the mobile node performs a handover
operation, i.e. when it moves from one base station to another. Hence, the mobile node must be able to quickly change
its IP address during the handover operation.
Many approaches [4] to efficiently support mobility within IP networks have been proposed. They are often called
IP Micro-mobility protocols. Sometimes designed to solve very specific problems, their heterogeneous characteristics
and properties do not allow to easily obtain an accurate picture of the mobility management problems in IP networks.
This paper presents a comprehensive comparison, in a global framework, of Mobile IP and seven of the main IP
Micro-mobility proposals. We first present a global mobility landscape and point out the important problems to be
addressed (section 2). In this first part, GPRS is presented as a case study to illustrate some important concepts. Based
on this framework, we first examine Mobile IP as a Macro-mobility protocol (section 3). Then, we briefly describe and
compare seven well-known IP Micro-mobility protocols in sections 4 and 5. We have chosen these protocols so that
their properties offer a good overview of the most important concepts that are used in the Micro-mobility protocols.

2 A global IP mobility framework

This section focuses on the presentation of a generic mobility landscape and the major issues for IP mobility to be
investigated within this landscape. We use GPRS as a case study to illustrate the different concepts presented in this
section.

2.1 The mobility landscape

2.1.1 A generic model
All-IP networks are the expected future mobile wireless networks, relying entirely on IP, from the mobile station to
the gateway towards the Internet. We call IP wireless domain1 a large IP wireless access network managed by a
Wireless LAN

AP
AP

IP wireless
access


AP

IP wireless
 access

Interdomain
backbone

domain

domain

Internet

Mobile node

BTS

UMTSlike
RAN

RNC
BTS

Radio Layer

IP Layer

Gateway
IP router

Network
Radio
Controler
Base
Transceiver

Point of Attachment

Access Point

IP Wireless

BTS
BTS

Wireless LAN
Station

BTS
BTS

Figure 1: A simple model of the future IP mobility landscape

single administrative authority. From an IP viewpoint, we can describe such a network as a set of Wireless IP Point
of Attachment (WIPPOA) connected to an IP backbone, with a gateway towards the Internet. From this point of view,
the concept of WIPPOA can be understood as the smallest IP entity in the network, similar to the notion of IP subnets
used in fixed IP networks. A Mobile Node (MN) can use the services offered by a domain by interacting via the radio
interface with one or more WIPPOA of this domain. When a MN changes its WIPPOA, the routing of the IP packets
destined to this MN must change accordingly.
This situation is illustrated in figure 1. In this picture, we present a wireless domain using an UMTS-like radio
interface. In such networks, the base stations, called Base Transceiver Station (BTS), are grouped under the control of
a dedicated station, the Radio Network Controller (RNC). Inside such a group(called Radio Access Network (RAN)),
the mobile movements are entirely managed at the radio layer and are thus transparent to the upper layers. A RAN can
thus be considered as a single WIPPOA. This is obviously only an example and the actual meaning of WIPPOA can
vary between wireless domains using different radio interface technologies. In figure 1, we have also shown a domain
using Wireless LAN (WLAN) as radio access points. Each of these LANs corresponds to a different WIPPOA.
We also assume that each MN is attached to a Home Network (HN), a domain from which it has obtained a static
IP address: its Home Address. In this context, static means that the lifetime of the address assignment is much longer
than the duration of the mobile movement. We call a Foreign Network (FN) any other domain where the MN can
connect.
Finally, in figure 1, we have added an IP inter-domain backbone dedicated to enable the roaming between the
domains, in analogy with the current GPRS networks.
2.1.2 The case of GPRS networks
As an illustration, we first present the case of GPRS networks [19]2 . These networks are not all-IP network but may
use IP in their backbone and they often provide IP-based data services. Moreover, GPRS offers a packet service to
allow the MN to communicate with other IP networks (such as the Internet) outside the GPRS network. Many mobile
operators have already deployed GPRS networks in Europe as an extension of GSM networks to provide data services
to their customers.
Figure 2 presents an overview of the logical architecture of a GPRS network. In such a network, the BTSs are
mostly the antennas where the MN can connect. These BTSs are all connected to a Base Station Controller (BSC). A
BSC and its depending BTSs constitute a Base Station System (BSS). The BSSs are connected to one Serving GPRS
Support Node (SGSN). The SGSNs and the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) belong to the IP-based GPRS
backbone and provide IP routing functionalities 3 . The communication between the SGSN and the BSS is not made
over an IP network but by using dedicated network protocols. Moreover, the BSSs are grouped to improve the mobility
management as we will see later. All the BSCs in a given group (called Routing Area (RA) are connected to the same
SGSN. Each BTS transmits periodically some informational messages on a dedicated channel. The mobiles use these
messages to learn the identification of their current cell and the RA (among other things) so that they can discover, for
example, that they have moved to another RA.
The GGSN is the node used to communicate with an external Packet Data Network (PDN), such as the Internet.
The GGSN is also part of the IP GPRS backbone. This backbone contains thus basically all the SGSNs, the GGSNs
and a set of IP routers to interconnect them. The Home Location Register (HLR) is a node containing the GPRS
subscription data and routing information. It is accessible from the GGSN and the SGSN. The GPRS network also
contains other important nodes, mainly used to maintain compatibility with GSM, that are outside the scope of this
paper.
A major goal of a GPRS network is to allow the MN to communicate with an external PDN i.e. transmit Packet
Data Protocol (PDP) Packet Data Unit (PDU), such as IP packets. Basically, a mobile can initiate a PDP session
by activating a PDP Context in the network. The data forwarding across the GPRS network (between a MN and an
external PDN) relies on the tunneling of packets between the GGSN and the SGSNs. The packets issued by a PDN
1 We

also use the words wireless domains or more simply domains to designate those networks.
interested reader can find a survey of GPRS in [1]
3 GPRS does not really assume that the use of IP within the backbone is a mandatory, but we focus here on a GPRS network using IP as network
layer.
2 The

BTS

BTS

BSS

MSC/VLR

BTS

SMS
Entities

BSC

HLR
EIR

BTS

SGSN

BTS

BSC
GPRS
Backbone
(IP)

SGSN

BTS

Packet Data Network

(IP, X.25, ...)

GGSN

GGSN

BSC

Mobile node
BTS

GPRS signaling
GPRS signaling and data transfer

other
GPRS
network

BTS

Figure 2: Overview of the GPRS logical architecture (from [19]: Figure 2)

are transmitted to the GGSN. The GGSN uses a tunnel to forward them to the SGSN to which the MN is currently
attached. This SGSN de-capsulates the tunneled packets and delivers them to the MN via the concerned BSS. This
type of tunnel is also used when the mobile sends a packet towards an external PDN. The protocol used to create these
tunnels is the GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) [20]. This is illustrated in figure 3 representing a very simplified view
of an IP session over a GPRS network. The focus is set on the nodes attached to the IP backbone.
IP
GTP
TCP/UDP
IP

BTS
BSC

GPRS
Backbone

Mobile node
IP Address : MN

SGSN
IP source: MN
IP dest.: CN

GT
Pt 
unn

GGSN

el

Internet

IP source: SGSN
IP dest.: GGSN

TCP/ 
UDP

GTP

IP source: MN
IP dest.: CN

IP source: MN
IP dest.: CN

Correspondant
Node
IP address : CN

Figure 3: GPRS data forwarding, with some layers of the transmission plane

This tunnel-based forwarding forces the GGSN to maintain a table with the IP address of the current SGSN serving
each MN allowed to receive data packets inside the network. This table must be updated when a MN moves from one
SGSN to another. This mechanism will be briefly described in the next section.
From an IP point of view, we can describe the GPRS network as a set of WIPPOA, made up of a single SGSN and
the depending BSSs, connected to a gateway, the GGSN, through an IP backbone. A slight difference with our simple
generic model is that the WIPPOA are directly connected to other GPRS networks through dedicated IP backbones
while our model assumes that all external communications pass through a gateway, even towards an inter-domain
backbone. In GPRS networks, this feature is used, for example, when a mobile is connected to a different network
than its home network. In this case, the serving SGSN establishes a direct GTP tunnel towards the GGSN of the home
network.

2.2 Major mobility issues

We now define some important issues for the mobility management in our mobility landscape. The comparison will
be made with respect to these topics on the basis of the following performance criteria : latency, amount of control
traffic, robustness and scalability.
2.2.1 Handover management
From the viewpoint of IP, the handover concerns the management of the changes of WIPPOA of the mobiles during
their moves. The handover management is obviously a major issue in mobility management since a MN can experience
several handovers during a single session as in current cellular telephone networks.
2.2.2 Different types of connectivity
Mobile devices have a very limited power capacity and their batteries must be spared by reducing the mobiles transmissions to the minimum required. This is a common problem in mobile telephony.
However, in order to forward the traffic to a mobile, the network must maintain some information on its geographical location. When the mobile transmits packets, the handover management ensures that the network always knows
the current location of the MN i.e. the cell where it is located. This procedure must obviously be fast and efficient
to ensure that the mobile experiences little perturbation during handover. We call this type of mobility management
the active connectivity mode, because the MN is actively transmitting data and not only signaling traffic inside the
network.
Unfortunately, even if a mobile is not transmitting any data, the network must maintain information about its
location. If a MN is not transmitting and changes its WIPPOA, it will be impossible to forward an incoming packet
destined to it since the network does not know where the mobile is located.
In most cases, the active handover management procedures (in active connectivity mode) generate a lot of control
traffic because each change of cell must be signaled and managed. This is very power consuming for the mobiles and
could be a burden for the network. In order to conserve the battery power of the mobiles and to reduce the signaling
traffic inside the network, wireless networks often define another working mode for the mobiles that do not currently
transmit data.
We call this mode the passive connectivity mode. In most cases, it implies the construction of a paging architecture.
This architecture consists in dividing the network in distinct geographical areas that we call paging areas. As an
example, we will see in section 2.2.4, that the passive and active connectivity mode are translated in GPRS networks
in the states machine of the mobile with stand-by state and ready state. We will also see that the paging areas are
called Routing Areas in these networks.
The mobility management proposals use different names for all these concepts. We have chosen to define passive
connectivity and active connectivity, as used [5] for example, in order to use a common terminology when comparing
several micro-mobility proposals.
When the mobile has no data to transmit it switches to passive connectivity mode and only issues a beacon when
changing of paging area. This implies that the network only knows the approximate location (the current paging area)
of the mobile. Any incoming data destined to a passive mobile forces the network to utilize a paging procedure to
5

find its precise location (the cell where it is located inside its paging area). At the end of this procedure, the network
can deliver the data directly to this cell. In most cases, the mobile switches then to active connectivity mode so that
the paging procedure is made only once for a data flow. On the other hand, to send data while in passive connectivity
mode, the MN must first inform the network of its current location and move to the active connectivity mode.
Enabling passive connectivity support via a paging architecture can be an additionnal burden for the network (at
least in terms of control traffic). It is important to realize that this architecture is used to support only incoming data
packets. This solution must thus be carefully considered with respect to efficiency concerns, such as the ratio of
incoming and outgoing communications or the number of handovers experienced by the mobiles.
2.2.3 Intra-domain traffic
Intra-domain traffic is an important part of the current traffic in wireless networks such as GSM/GPRS (the Short
Messages Service (SMS) for example). We can expect that the mobile users of future wireless networks will also
communicate a lot between mobiles connected to the same domain. This type of traffic must thus be efficiently
supported.
2.2.4 Mobility issues and GPRS
As an example, we briefly describe how these mobility issues are supported in the GPRS networks.
Mobility Management
in figure 4.

From a GPRS point of view4 , a mobile node can be described by the state machine illustrated

Mobile not Reachable

GPRS Detach

IDLE
GPRS Detach
GPRS Attach

STANDBY

Mobile Reachable
The network only knows
its current Routing Area

READY
READY timer expiry
or
Force to STANDBY

Mobile Reachable
The network knows
its current Cell

PDU transmission
(data or signalling)

Figure 4: The GPRS Mobility Management state machine, MN side, from [19]: Figure 13
In the IDLE state, the MN is not reachable: it is not attached to the GPRS network.
In the STANDBY state, the mobile is attached to the network and involved in the Mobility Management. It
performs a routing area update when changing of RA. Each time it detects a change of RA it issues a special message
to inform the network of its current location.
In this way, the network only knows the RA where the MN is currently attached. To establish a data flow towards
the mobile, it must first find its location inside this RA. The SGSN in charge of the RA will send a request to all the
BSSs of the area, so that each BTS will broadcast a request message on a dedicated channel. All mobiles listen to this
channel and the concerned mobile will send a reply to the GGSN.
4 We

focus here on the IP side of the GPRS network.

The state of the MN is changed to READY when it sends data or signaling information (such as a response
to request as above). The mobile can also move to IDLE state by initiating a GPRS Detach procedure. After the
expiration of the Mobile Reachable Timer, the SGSN assumes that a mobile in STANDBY state is now in the IDLE
state.
In the READY state, the MN is reachable in this state, attached to the network and involved in the Mobility Management. It informs the network each time it changes of cell (by a cell update procedure or a RA update procedure).
The mobile moves to STANDBY state after the expiration of the Ready Timer. This timer must be carefully tuned.
It must be sufficiently large to reduce the number of paging procedures that can be triggered by bursty traffic (such as
IP traffic). If each burst triggers a paging procedure, the signaling traffic will become very high. The SGSN can also
force a mobile to move to the STANDBY state.
The mobile may move to the IDLE state by initiating a GPRS Detach procedure.
In a GPRS network, an IP handover is called packet rerouting. It implies that the IP routing (in the backbone)
changes for the concerned mobile. This occurs only when the MN changes of SGSN. In this case, the network must
create a new GTP tunnel between the GGSN and the new SGSN.
As all BTSs in a RA are connected to the same SGSN, each packet rerouting implies an inter-SGSN Routing Area
Update. We only describe this kind of update procedure as it is the most important in the perspective of an IP mobility
management. It is described in the figure 5 but we focus here only on the IP mobility management in the case of a
successful registration.

1. Routing Area Update Request

2. SGSN Context Request
2. SGSN Context Response
3. Security Functions

 4. SGSN Context Acknowledge

 5. Forward waiting packets
 6. Update PDP Context Request
 6. Update PDP Context Response
 7. Update Location
 8. Cancel Location
 8. Cancel Location Ack
 9. Insert Subscriber Data
 9. Insert Subscriber Data Ack
10. Update Location Ack
11. Routing Area Update Accept
12. Routing Area Update Completed

Figure 5: Inter SGSN Routing Area Update Procedure, from [19]: Figure 28

The procedure begins when the MN is connected to the new BTS inside the new RA. The mobile sends an Update
RA Request to the new SGSN. Upon reception of this request, the new SGSN sends a SGSN Context Request to the
old SGSN. This has two main goals:
allowing the new SGSN to authenticate the MN with information provided by the old SGSN via the SGSN
Context Response;
informing the old SGSN of the address of the new one so that it may forward any packet arrived for the MN
during the Routing Area Update.
The new SGSN sends an acknowledgment to the old one to trigger the forwarding of waiting packets.
The new SGSN must then inform the GGSN of the new WIPPOA of the mobile. This is done via an Update PDP
context request/response exchange. At this time, the GGSN has updated the SGSN address for the mobile and the
network knows all the required information to correctly forward the packets sent or received by the mobile.
The new SGSN then contacts the HLR to update its location data for the MN. The HLR sends a Cancel Location to
the old SGSN so that it removes the PDP context associated with the mobile. A timer is associated with these contexts
in the SGSN to remove outdated PDP contexts. The old SGSN acknowledges the messages and the HLR can send
Insert Subscriber Data to the new SGSN.
Upon the reception of such a message, the new SGSN needs to validate the location of the MN in the new RA.
After the last checking and if they are successful, the new SGSN builds a new context for the mobile and sends an
acknowledgment to the HLR.
After a last ack from the HLR, in the case of a successful update, the new SGSN sends a Routing Area Update
Accept to the MN. The mobile acknowledges it to complete the procedure.
Intra-domain traffic We focus here on an exchange of IP packets between two MNs connected to a GPRS network.
Once they have activated an IP PDP context, the MNs can exchange IP packets. Figure 6 illustrates this exchange of
packets. We can see that all packets pass through the GGSN. This will occur even if the two mobiles are connected to
the same SGSN. This is obviously not an optimal solution from the viewpoint of routing efficiency. We will see that
this type of intra-domain routing, often called triangular routing, also occurs with Mobile IP.
GPRS within our framework On the basis of the GPRS mobility management, we can now describe the GPRS
network within our framework.
The MN can experience different kinds of handover. When it moves between BTSs that are all connected to the
same SGSN (even through different BSCs), it experiences then what we will call a radio handover as opposed to an IP
handover (packet rerouting). These radio handovers are entirely managed outside the IP backbone and do not influence
the IP routing. For this reason, a WIPPOA in a GPRS network is composed of a SGSN and all the related BSCs with
their BTSs. In currently deployed networks, such a WIPPOA can represent a large geographical area for a single point
of attachment.
We can also describe the GPRS MN states machine by using the connectivity modes of framework. When the
GPRS MN is in STANDBY state, it can be described as in passive connectivity mode within our framework (we use
here exactly the same definition as [5]). On the other hand, the MN in READY state will be labeled as in active
connectivity mode within our framework. In the IDLE state, the MN has obviously no connectivity at all.

2.3 A glimpse at 3G networks

In this section, we briefly discuss UMTS networks, as currently being standardized by 3GPP [32], to provide an
overview of the mobility management within 3G networks [13].
2.3.1 A brief overview of UMTS
At first glance, UMTS re-uses the GPRS mobility management procedures [21, 23, 22]. The main difference is that
UMTS, and in particular UMTS releases 4 and 5, relies more intensively on IP than GPRS. UMTS networks have two
8

!IP source: MN1

IP dest.: MN2

BTS
BSC
MN
SGSN
GT

PT

GPRS
Backbone

unn

GGSN

el 1

l2

unne

T
GTP

SGSN
BSC
MN

BTS
Figure 6: Intra-domain routing in GPRS network

distinct parts : Circuit Switched (CS) and Packet Switched (PS). Inside the UMTS Core Network (UCN), these parts
are called domains. IPis used in the PS domain of the UMTS network and is equivalent to the IP backbone used in
GPRS networks. However IP is also used to connect the radio access network (Universal Terrestrial Radio Access
Network (UTRAN)) and the PS domain of the UCN.
As shown in figure 7, UMTS re-uses several architectural principles of GPRS. Inside the UTRAN, we find two
types of entities: UMTS Radio Network Controller (URNC) and Node B (NB). They are the UMTS counterparts of the
GPRS BSC and BTS respectively. An URNC and its depending NBs constitute a Radio Network Subsystem (RNS),
equivalent to a GPRS BSS.
An important difference between GPRS and UMTS is the mobility management. While GPRS uses a state-machine
with three states to describe the MNs, UMTS defines the concept of radio level connection (RRC connection). The
UMTS terminals can thus be described (roughly) as being in two states: connected at the radio layer or not. Moreover,
the radio layer connection can be in four different states corresponding to its transmission activity.
When the MN is not connected, the network behaviour is very close to the GPRS mobility management in the
STANDBY state. Similar procedures are used, like RA update and paging requests/reply for example.
When the RRC connection is established, from an IP mobility point of view, we have a kind of two level hierarchy
inside the UMTS IP network. At the first level, inside the UCN, the packets sent by the users are managed as in GPRS
by using GTP tunnels between the UMTS GGSN and the UMTS SGSNs. At the second level, between the UCN and
the UTRAN, GTP tunnels are also used to enable the communication between the SGSNs and the URNCs.
These tunnels are dynamically established and removed by a new procedure called SRNS relocation [21] to manage
changes of Serving RNS for a MN. The Serving RNS is the RNS where the MN has established the RRC connection.
This RNS may be different from the RNS where the MN is actually located (called Drift RNS), inside a given RA.

Circuit Switched
Domain

#Correspondant

UMTS
Core Network

HLR

Node

MSC, VLR, GMSC, ...

GGSN

EIR

tun
P
GT

Packet
" Data Network
(IP, X.25, ...)

l
ne

SGSN

tu n n
el

SGSN

GTP

UMTS IP Network
RNC
RNC

Node B

RNS

Node B

Node B
Node B

Node B

UTRAN
Mobile node

UMTS signaling
UMTS signaling and data transfer

Figure 7: Overview of the UMTS logical architecture and data forwarding

In this case, the packets must obviously be forwarded from the Serving RNS to the Drift RNS. The SRNS relocation
allows the UCN to forward the packets directly to the RNS where the MN is located.
The IP mobility management procedures used inside UMTS networks are specific cases of the SRNS relocation
procedure. In case of a change of RA for example, this procedure occurs across the UCN and is performed between
the current SGSN, the GGSN and the HLR. On the other hand, the SNRS relocation is limited to the SGSN when the
mobile does not change of RA. These two levels define the IP mobility management hierarchy inside UMTS. In figure
7 we can see the two GTP tunnels used to forward the mobile data packets across this hierarchy.
2.3.2 UMTS in our framework
Within our framework, a UMTS WIPPOA is thus composed of the Serving RNS (instead of the GGSN and all depending BSS with GPRS).
We can describe a MN without an RRC connection as being in a passive connectivity mode. In the same way, a
mobile with an RRC connection to the UMTS network can be considered in an active connectivity mode. However,
UMTS defines four different states for the connection, with respect to the activity of the mobile. Such a precision can
not be described within our framework.

10

3 Mobile IP and all-IP wireless networks

In order to introduce the comparison of the micro-mobility protocols, we first present a brief overview of Mobile IP
[2] and its major drawbacks that have led to the definition of the micro-mobility approach.

3.1 Mobile IP
Mobile IP is probably the most widely known mobility management proposal. Its simplicity and scalability give it a
growing success. Mobile IP is described in [2] (a good review paper can be found in [31]). Several extensions and
enhancements are described in [28, 29, 35, 9]. Here, we discuss the principles of Mobile IP and ignore the differences
between the IPv6 and IPv4 versions.
To allow a mobile IP node to change its WIPPOA, Mobile IP defines two types of Mobility Agent (MA) : the
Home Agent (HA) and the Foreign Agent (FA). The HA is located inside the home network of each mobile and a FA
is located inside each foreign network where a MN can connect.
Mobile IP uses a couple of addresses to manage users movements. Each time the MN changes its WIPPOA,
it obtains a temporary address called Care Of Address (COA) from a FA directly connected to this WIPPOA. The
presence of the FA in a particular subnet can be detected via FA advertisement messages that are extensions to Internet
Control Message Protocol (ICMP) router advertisement messages [10]. Those messages are broadcasted at regular
time intervals by the FA. The MN can also send advertisement messages to trigger a FA to transmit its advertisement
message. Each time a FA delivers a COA to a new MN, it must insert a binding for this mobile in a dedicated table
called its visitors list.
Once the MN has obtained its new COA, it must inform its HA of this new address by using the registration
process. As soon as the HA is aware of the MNs current COA, it will intercept the packets received in the home
network for the MN. The HA will then tunnel those packets to the FA. Upon reception of encapsulated packets, the
FA will deliver the original packet to concerned the mobile node. This is illustrated in figure 8
Correspondant
Node

'IP source: CN

IP address : CN

IP dest.: MN

)From the Correspondent to Mobile

*IP within IP encapsulation

From the Mobile to Correspondent

&Home
%Network

R
R

'

Internet

R
Home Agent

IP source: MN
IP dest.: CN

IP Address : HA

'IP source: HA
IP dest.: COA
CN
'IPIP source:
dest.: MN

Foreign
Agent
'
IP Address : FA

Foreign
%Network

node
'Mobile
IP Address : MN

(Careofaddress: COA
Figure 8: Basic working of Mobile IP

11

3.2 The micro-mobility approach

Mobile IP suffers from several well-known weaknesses that have led to the macro/micro-mobility approach. In this
section, we review some of these weaknesses to introduce this approach. We also point out several important properties
shared by the micro-mobility proposals considered in this paper.
In Mobile IP, the basic mobility management procedure is composed of two parts: the movement detection by the
MN and the registration to the HA. Every time the mobile changes its WIPPOA, these two steps must be accomplished
to allow the MN to continue to receive packets. However, it is the MN that initiates the process by sending a registration
request once it has detected that it moved from one network to another and has obtained a new COA. This introduces
two causes of latency: move detection latency and registration latency. The move detection latency is the time required
by the MN to detect that it has changed of WIPPOA. It can be large since the move detection mechanisms in Mobile
IP are based on either the expiration of the lifetime of FA agent advertisements5 or on the comparison of the address
prefix of two different agent advertisements. The registration latency is the required time to complete the registration
with the HA. As this HA can be located anywhere on the Internet, this process can take a long time and sometimes be
impossible to complete.
Those latencies, due to the properties of Mobile IP, introduce a delay before the packets destined to the MN can
be routed correctly towards its new location. During this time, the mobile is already connected to its new WIPPOA
but the packets that are sent to it are routed to its old WIPPOA. These packets are thus lost for the MN.
In the case of a quickly moving mobile which changes of network rapidly, the registration process will become
totally inefficient. Moreover, this mechanism produces a lot of control traffic inside the local domain and across the
Internet.
The micro-mobility approach tries to reduce the latency of the handover management. This approach does not
always reduce the control traffic, but it allows to reduce the number of network stations that process the control
packets by restricting the propagation of those packets to a smaller set of stations.
The micro-mobility approach implies the utilization of two different protocols to manage the mobility:
Mobile IP is used to manage the movements of the MN between distant wireless domains and across the Internet
(macro-mobility),
A micro-mobility protocol is used to manage the movement of the MN inside each wireless domain.
A micro-mobility protocol behaves as follows. The MN obtains a local COA when it connects to a domain. This
COA remains valid while the MN stays in this domain and the mobile will thus perform only one home registration
(registration with the HA) when it first connects to the domain. The users movements inside the domain are managed
by a micro-mobility protocol. This is transparent to the HA and the rest of the Internet. In fact, for the HA, each
wireless domain is considered as a single Mobile IP subnet. Latency and control traffic across the network are thus
extremely reduced.
This is the main reason to adopt a micro-mobility approach. On this basis, each micro-mobility proposal aims at
reducing the move detection latency (by an interaction with the radio layer for example) and at optimizing the handover
management inside a domain.

4 Comparison of Micro-mobility protocols

This section presents a short description of the main elements of the different micro-mobility protocols that we have
selected and, for each protocol, an evaluation against the criteria defined within our framework.

4.1 Comparison criteria

We define here the four criteria selected with respect to our framework and the different parameters used to compare
and evaluate the micro-mobility proposals.
5 This

is the lifetime indicated in the ICMP router advertisement

12

4.1.1 Handoff
The handoff management is the most important issue in the mobility management. We investigate it on the basis of
the simple network model shown in figure 9 with respect to:
handoff management parameters: the interaction with the radio layer, initiator of the handover management
mechanism, use of traffic bicasting, etc.,
handoff latency: the time needed to complete the handoff inside the network,
potential packet losses: the amount of lost packets during the handoff,
involved stations: the number of MAs that must update their routing data or process messages during the
handover.
For this comparison, we assume that +-,/.1032 is the average number of hops between a MN and the gateway. The
delay between these two hosts is 4 ,/.10326587:9<; . Similarly, +-=?> 2A@ is the number of hops between a MN and its former
WIPPOA (delay: 4?=/> 2A@B5C7:9:; ). 4?DE>GF?HAH is the average delay in 5C7:9:; between the MN and the so-called crossover node
for a given handoff. This node is the first common node located on both the path between the new WIPPOA and
the old WIPPOA and on the path between the new WIPPOA and the gateway. In the case of FA based mobility
management (see section 4.2.1), these concepts must be understood in terms of FA. In general, we can assume that
4 ,/.1032JI 4?=?> 2A@KI 4?DE>?F?HAH . 4?LNM is the average time needed to reach the HA with the classical Mobile IP registration
mechanism.

Q Gateway

PCrossover
P CrossoverStation
Node
U

j klmn
e statf iong s covheirage area
a se
R
SBase
oIPNew
POA
Station

Internet

t gate

tT cross

t prev

W BXaYsZ e [ st\ at] io^ ns _

cover` a b

cd

age a
re a

Previous
Base
IP POA
Station

OMobiles movement
Figure 9: A simple model to compare handoff mechanisms
When investigating the performance of handover mechanisms in micro-mobility protocols, we must consider the
important issue of move detection. We have already seen that the micro-mobility approach reduces the registration
latency since most of the registrations are restricted to the current domain. However, the detection of the occurrence
of a handoff is another important source of delay for real-time applications. As the IP handover management occurs
after the movement detection, this detection must be as fast as possible. In other words, any IP handover management
mechanism is useless if the movements of the MN are detected too late and packets have already been lost. In Mobile
IP, the movement detection is performed by using two algorithms described in [2]. These algorithms are based on the
ICMP router discovery messages. Handoff is detected when receiving a Mobility Agent Advertisement with a source
address located in another network (beginning with a different prefix) or when the lifetime of the last Mobility Agent
Advertisement received expires. With the first algorithm, the detection occurs, on average, after the time between two
Agent Advertisement (twice this time in worst case). With the second algorithm, it occurs after the lifetime of the
Agent Advertisement. The values of these parameters should be adapted to the local network (their default values are
30 min. for the lifetime and 7-10 min. for the time interval between two Agent Advertisement [10]). We will call this
latency 4?prq = .
In the case of protocols relying on an interaction with the radio layer, we call st4?0 > qu,/,/2 > the time between the
reception of the radio trigger (ex. Strong Handoff Radio Trigger (SHRT)) and the actual radio handoff i.e. the moment
13

when the radio link between the MN and its old WIPPOA is removed. This time interval obviously depends on the
radio technology, the load, the local topology of the network, the MN movements,
. . . In x figure 9, st4?0 > qv,/,/2 > may
x
represent the time that the mobile crosses an overlapping
area, going from point w to point y , if, for example, the
x
radio trigger is sent when the mobile is at point w .
For each proposal, we have defined the uncertainty time. During this time interval, after the radio link with the old
WIPPOA is deleted, the packets destined to the MN may be lost or incorrectly routed in the network. This parameter
is very important since it reflects the efficiency of the handoff management mechanism with respect to packet losses.
In our comparison, we do not take into account the time required by the MN to reach the stations on the wireless
interface. This time, which can be long, is not relevant for our comparison. Moreover, we also neglect the time
required to transfer packets inside a RAN for the FA based mobility management proposals. We consider that this is
a layer 2 characteristic. However, it can be large in the case of protocols assuming interaction between layers since a
RAN can cover a very large geographic area.
4.1.2 Passive connectivity and Paging
We have described the support of the passive connectivity in section 2.2. Only a few proposals define a support for
this feature by using a paging architecture. For these protocols, we evaluate the algorithm used to perform the paging
with respect to efficiency and network load.
4.1.3 Intra-network traffic
Intra-network traffic corresponds to the packets exchanged between MNs connected to the same wireless network.
This kind of communication is a large part of todays GSM communications and we can expect that it will remain an
important class of traffic in future wireless networks. The efficient support of this type of traffic is thus an important
concern.
4.1.4 Scalability and robustness
Current mobile networks support millions of connected users communicating at the same time. We can expect that
future large wireless access networks will have the same constrains in terms of users load. For example, a commercial
router acting as GGSN in a GPRS network is able to manage 90,000 simultaneous user contexts [8]. These facts are
to be related to the increasing load of todays Internet routers: routing tables containing a few hundreds of thousands
entries have become a performance problem.
We evaluate the different proposals with respect to their scalability and the stations requirements within the network.

4.2 Selected IP Micro-mobility protocols

In this section, we present the different micro-mobility proposals and we evaluate them with respect to our framework.
Each subsection is organized as follow: a short description of the protocol, followed by the evaluation of this protocol
against our criteria.
We group four proposals under the label FA based mobility management proposals. These are extensions to
Mobile IP for the micro-mobility management and the interaction between different FAs in the network is the basic
mechanism of the mobility management for these proposals. These proposals are Hierarchical Mobile IP [17] and its
extension for the regional paging [18], Fast Handoff [12], Proactive Handoff [3] (see also [11]) and finally TeleMIP
[14] that is more an architecture than a real protocol. We also include in the comparison Cellular IP [5], HAWAII
[33, 34] and EMA [25, 24]. All these protocols are the result of the standardization process within the IETF Mobile
IP [15] and the Seamoby [16] working groups. A comparison of the handoff performance of Cellular IP, HAWAII and
Hierarchical Mobile IP can be found in [7] and a good taxonomy of the different micro-mobility proposals may be
found in [4].

14

4.2.1 FA based mobility management proposals

Several micro-mobility proposals manage the user mobility on the basis of interactions between FAs. Hierarchical
Mobile IP [17], is an extension to Mobile IP that supports a hierarchy of FAs between the MN and the HA. Several
improvements to Hierarchical Mobile IP, including a paging mechanism, have been proposed in [18]. Fast Handoff
[12] and Proactive Handoff [3] are two similar proposals based on Hierarchical Mobile IP with improved handoff
mechanisms. TeleMIP [14] adds some load balancing features to the basic principles of Hierarchical Mobile IP.
A basic network model for these proposals is shown in the figure 10 (left). Here we have a set of WIPPOAs and
each is associated with a dedicated FA. The FAs are connected to a so-called Gateway Foreign Agent (GFA). This
network model is used by Hierarchical Mobile IP and Proactive Handoff. TeleMIP uses the same model but allows the
FAs to be connected to several GFAs.
Figure 10 (right) shows a slightly more complex architecture with a multi-level hierarchy of FAs between the GFA
and the leaf FAs. Each FA in the hierarchy may be in charge of a WIPPOA. This type of network is described in the
appendix B of [17] and is used to support Fast Handoff.

GFA

GFA

z FA

z FA

FA

z FA
FA

FA

z FA
z FA

FA

Figure 10: Network models for FA based mobility management

A. Short descriptions of the proposals

Hierarchical Mobile IP
Hierarchical Mobile IP [17] is a natural extension to Mobile IP to efficiently support the micro-mobility approach.
After the first connection of a MN to a domain and its home registration with the address of the GFA as COA, the
MN will perform Regional Registrations only. Those registrations are sent by the mobile to the GFA each time it
changes of FA (i.e. of WIPPOA). A regional registration contains the new local COA of the MN: the address that
can be used by the GFA to reach the MN while it remains connected to the same FA. This address can be either a
co-located address or the FA address. The routing of IP packets with Hierarchical Mobile IP is then very simple. A
packet destined to the MN is first intercepted by the HA and tunneled to the GFA. Then, the GFA de-capsulates and
re-tunnels it towards the current local COA of the MN.
Hierarchical Mobile IP also supports a multi-level hierarchy of FAs between the leaf WIPPOA and the GFA. Each
FA in the hierarchy must maintain a binding in its visitors list for each MN connected to a WIPPOA lower in the
hierarchy. These bindings are established and refreshed by regular registration requests and replies that the mobiles
exchange in the network. The regional registrations sent by a MN are only forwarded to the first FA that already has
a binding for this MN. The upper levels of the hierarchy are not aware of the details of the mobiles movements since
they do not need to change their binding. In this way, the handoff management is limited to a very small number of
nodes.
In addition, [18] has introduced a paging support for Hierarchical Mobile IP. It relies on paging areas that are
sub-trees of a single hierarchy (all the stations belonging the the same paging area belong to the same sub-tree). In
each of these areas, the root of the sub-tree is called a Paging Foreign Agent (PFA). It maintains a specific visitors
list with an idle flag set for each mobile in passive connectivity mode currently located inside this area. The PFA is in
15

charge of the entire paging process by performing the paging request and managing the incoming packets destined to
passive MNs. This paging mechanism is not included in the other FA based mobility protocols discussed later in this
section.
The architecture of Hierarchical Mobile IP is similar to the architecture of GPRS, especially if the Hierarchical
Mobile IP network has only a two levels hierarchy. The GFA is similar to the GGSN and the leaf FAs represent
WIPPOAs, similar to the SGSNs. Both protocols use tunnels to forward the traffic inside the network. Their main
difference lies in their respective utilization of IP. GPRS uses IP only inside the backbone. Hierarchical Mobile IP
assumes an all-IP network. This difference is illustrated by the size of the WIPPOAs. In GPRS a WIPPOA corresponds
to a single SGSN. This implies a very large size since the BSCs and their BTSs connected to a single SGSN can cover
a wide area. In Hierarchical Mobile IP, IP is pushed to the last level before the BTSs and an WIPPOA is assumed
to cover a smaller geographical area. Moreover, the way that the paging architecture is implemented in these two
proposals is directly linked to their own architecture. In GPRS, the BTS belonging to the same RA must be connected
to the same SGSN. Hence, a single WIPPOA potentially includes several RA. On the other hand, in Hierarchical
Mobile IP, the paging areas are sub-trees of the main hierarchy and thus include several WIPPOA. Another important
difference between these two protocols is that GPRS includes security and accounting functionalities. To implement
these features, the GPRS network uses the HLR, an entity that does not exists in Hierarchical Mobile IP, and a more
complex (and also longer) handover management procedure.
Fast Handoff
Fast Handoff [12] re-uses the architecture and principles of Hierarchical Mobile IP and addresses two remaining
problems of this proposal. These are mainly the need for a fast handoff management for real-time applications and the
presence of triangular routing inside the domain.
In the previous section, we have seen that Hierarchical Mobile IP does not improve the Mobile IP movement detection: it relies on the ICMP Router Advertisement messages used by Mobile IP. Fast Handoff assumes the possibility
of an interaction with the radio layer to anticipate the handoff and allows the MN to perform its registration with a
new FA via the old FA before the handoff actually occurs. We assume here that the IP layer receives these handoff
events as triggers from the radio layer. We use these triggers as a simple way of representing the interaction between
the radio and the IP layers during the handover. In most cases, the radio layer is constantly doing power measurement
on the signals received from its peers (for example during the cell selection procedure). On the basis of these measurements, it is possible to evaluate the signal quality for a particular node and to detect that a handover is at the point
to append. When the handover occurs, the radio layer informs the IP layer with a dedicated trigger.
In Fast Handoff, these triggers are designed to inform the IP layer of the imminence of a handoff by providing the
next WIPPOA of the MN (the IP address of the new FA). We call this interaction with the radio interface: SHRT, as
it contains the new WIPPOA of the MN. These SHRT can be received by any of the nodes involved in a handover
process: the MN as well as the WIPPOAs. Moreover, they can receive these triggers at different times during the
handover.
On this basis, the protocol contains two mechanisms to perform the handoff with respect to the capabilities of
the radio layer when a mobile is able to communicate with more than one base station. A global overview of these
mechanisms is shown in the left side of figure 11. In this figure, we can see that the first step is an interaction between
the radio and the IP layer: the reception of the SHRT by the new FA. This FA then sends an agent advertisement to
the MN via the old FA. Finally, the MN registers with the new FA using its current radio link with the old FA. It is
also possible to use the bicasting [2] capabilities of Mobile IP with simultaneous bindings to reduce the possibility of
packet losses.
Fast Handoff is the only proposal addressing the problem of triangular routing inside the domain (cf. 2.2.4, third
paragraph). This is done by using the information found in the visitors list. When a FA receives a non-encapsulated
packet coming from a MN, it consults its visitors list to see whether it contains an entry for the destination address.
If it contains one, the FA can directly send the packet to this address. Otherwise, it forwards the packet as a normal
Mobile IP packet. Figure 12 illustrates the triangular routing problem. In the left part of the figure, the intra-domain
triangular routing is shown as it appears with Mobile IP. The IP packets sent by MN1 are routed to the HA of MN2
and return then to the domain where the mobiles are located. In the middle, we can see the partial solution that is
offered by the route optimization extension: MN1 knows the COA of MN2. When this address belongs to the FA, the
16

Proactive handoff

Fast handoff
1

L2 /L 3 interaction

} O| ld

2

New
|FA

FA

~Handoff request/reply

New FA agent advertisement

} O| ld

Registration with the GFA

New
| FA

FA

2

{GFA

L2 /L 3 interaction

Registration with the new FA

Registration to the GFA
sent by the new FA

Registration to the new FA

via the old FA

Figure 11: Handoff mechanisms for Fast Handoff and Proactive Handoff
packets remain in the domain but pass trough the gateway since this node acts as FA outside the domain. The right
part of figure presents the working of Fast Handoff.

Classical Mobile IP
Internet

Route optimization
Internet

HA 2

MN 2

HA 2

MN 1

Gateway
2

MN 1

MN 2

HA 2

Internet

Gateway

Gateway
2

Fast Handoff

MN 2

MN 1

Figure 12: The triangular routing problem

Proactive Handoff
Proactive Handoff [3] shares many properties with Fast Handoff: it assumes the same architecture as Hierarchical
Mobile IP, except the multi-level hierarchy. It aims at providing a fast handoff mechanism by using a SHRT. The main
difference is that the IP handoff is not performed by the MN with a registration request but by both the old and the
new FAs. After a short negotiation, the new FA sends a Regional Registration Request to the GFA on behalf of the
MN. At this time, it is possible to bicast the packets destined to this mobile to the two FAs. The new FA will then send
an agent advertisement to the MN so that it can perform a normal registration, as shown in the right side of figure 11.
Proactive Handoff also allows to use the Anchor Registration described in [17] to reduce the registration latency.
TeleMIP
TeleMIP [14] is described as a mobility architecture based on the same principles as Hierarchical Mobile IP. A
limitation of TeleMIP is that it supports only a two-level hierarchy. Its major improvement is that there can be several
GFAs in the network and that the FAs can be connected to more than one GFA. This allows to select the GFA with
some load balancing algorithm so that the burden of the mobiles management is not set on a single machine.
17

B. Evaluation within our framework

Handoff Management
The Hierarchical Mobile IP handoff mechanisms are designed to limit the handoff management at alocal level
while the MN remains in the same hierarchy 6. When changing of WIPPOA, the MN must issue a registration request.
This registration request only needs to reach the first FA having a binding for this mobile in its visitors list. This FA
is obviously the crossover node and the time to reach it is thus 4 DE>?FGHH . When receiving a regional registration request
for a MN for which it already has an entry in its visitors list, the crossover node must send a binding update with a
zero lifetime to the previous address of this MN to remove the old route: this is called de-registration[2]. As 4?DE>?FGHH is
the average time to reach the crossover node, the total time to reach this node and to remove the old route is 4?DE>GF?HAH .
When changing of hierarchy, the MN must perform a classical Mobile IP registration with its HA, the latency is thus
4?LNM . The uncertainty time is 4 pNq =4?DE>?FGHH in the first case. In the case of a registration with the home agent, it is
more difficult to evaluate this time interval. Indeed, Hierarchical Mobile IP allows to use the soft handoff mechanisms
described in [30] to ensure that packet losses can only occur during the time needed to reach the previous FA. If we
assume a handoff between two hierarchies belonging to the same domain, the uncertainty time will be 4?prq = 4 =/> 2A@ .
The handover will involve + DE>?FGHH FAs in the first case and +-,/.1032 MA (FAs in the new hierarchy and the HA) in
the second case.
Fast Handoff tries to reduce the handoff latency by using a SHRT to detect the mobile movements. When a handoff
is almost happening, the network triggers the new FA to send an Agent Advertisement to the MN via the old FA before
the end of the radio handoff. The MN can thus register with the new FA with classical Mobile IP mechanisms while
still having an IP binding with the old FA. Three working modes for Fast Handoff are defined in [11]. If the old FA
receives the SHRT and initiates the IP handoff management, the mechanism is called source triggered handoff. If
the new FA initiates the IP handoff, it is called target triggered handoff. Finally, if the MN initiates the handoff after
receiving a SHRT, we will speak of mobile initiated handoff. Furthermore, the different FAs can exchange Agent
Solicitation and Advertisement messages before handoff so that the old FA can send directly an Agent Advertisement
referencing the new FA to the MN. This allows to skip the Agent Advertisement Request/Reply exchange between the
new FA and the MN. The uncertainty time is thus reduced to the time needed to complete the registration.
With Fast Handoff, the mobile must receive an Agent Advertisement before making a registration with the new FA
and all these messages pass through the old FA. As the Agent Advertisement can be sent by the old FA, the total IP
handoff latency can be 4 =/> 2A@4 DE>?FGHH in the case of source triggered or mobile initiated handoff, and 4 =/> 2@N4 DE>GF?HAH
for a target triggered handoff. The packet losses may be avoided if the crossover FA receives the registration request
before the radio handover is completed7. This occurs when st4?0 > qv,/,?2 > is greater than or equal to the IP handoff latency
minus the time to receive the registration reply (4 DE>?FGHH ).
Proactive Handoff also uses a SHRT to anticipate the handoff but in a different way : the handoff is entirely
managed by the FAs. When a FA detects that handoff is happening, it sends a Handoff Request to the other concerned
FA (which can be the old or the new one). This agent replies with a Handoff Reply and if this reply is positive, the new
FA sends a Regional Registration Request for the mobile to the GFA. In this way, a FA can establish an IP binding with
a MN before having a radio link with it. The exchange of handoff request/reply messages allows the FAs to establish a
tunnel between them to bicast the packets to the MN. If this tunnel is established before the radio handoff, it is possible
to avoid packet losses. This is the case when st4?0 > qv,/,?2 > is greater than or equal to 4 =/> 2@ , the time required to transfer
the request from the old FA to the new FA and the reply in the opposite direction.
TeleMIP has exactly the same handoff characteristics as Hierarchical Mobile IP with a two level hierarchy.
Passive connectivity support
Only Hierarchical Mobile IP explicitly includes the support of this feature with its paging extension [18]. As in
mobile telephony networks, the stations are grouped in paging areas and the network must perform a paging to find
the actual WIPPOA of the MN. These paging areas must be sub-trees of the main network hierarchy. The roots of
these sub-trees are called Paging FAs and are responsible for the all the pagings inside their area.
6 We

assume here Hierarchical Mobile IP with a multi-level hierarchy.

consider that the Hierarchical Mobile IP mechanisms are used inside a single hierarchy. In the case of a handoff between two different
hierarchies,
becomes
.
7 We

EGA

A-

18

Intra-network traffic
With Hierarchical Mobile IP, Proactive Handoff and TeleMIP, this type of traffic will be directed to the HA of the
destination. Even with the use of the route optimization extension [30], it will pass through the gateway. Only Fast
Handoff supports a routing mechanism that re-uses the informations in the visitors list of the FAs to directly route
the traffic whenever possible. If a FA receives a non-encapsulated packet, it searches its visitors list for a binding
for the destination. If such a binding is found, the FA sends the packet directly. Otherwise, it follows the classical
Hierarchical Mobile IP forwarding scheme.
Scalability and robustness
The FA based mobility management proposals rely on a tree-like wireless access network. A dedicated node acts as
a gateway and is the root of this tree. A direct consequence is that the stations close to the gateway are more heavily
loaded than the leaf stations. This heavier load is due to the packet processing and the handling of the soft tables. The
gateway is hence the more heavily loaded station in the network, processing all updates and maintaining tables entries
for all the MNs inside the network.
These architectures are weak since they rely on specific routers such as the gateway and the surrounding stations. In
the case of Hierarchical Mobile IP with regional paging, the situation is even worse since only a few stations maintain
the paging information, making the network extremely vulnerable to a crash of these stations. TeleMIP introduces also
some kind of load-balancing by supporting several GFAs.
The nodes in Hierarchical Mobile IP, Fast Handoff, Proactive Handoff and TeleMIP are classical Mobile IP FA
with extended capabilities.
4.2.2 Cellular IP
A. Description
Cellular IP [5, 6, 36] aims to replace IP inside the wireless access network. A Cellular IP domain is composed of
MAs and one of them acts as a gateway towards the Internet and as a Mobile IP FA for macro-mobility. Each MA
maintains a routing cache that contains the next hop to reach a MN (one entry per mobile) and the next hop to reach
the gateway. This cache is used by the MA to forward packets from the gateway to the MN or from the MN to the
gateway. The routes are established and basically maintained by the hop-by-hop transmission of two special control
packets. Upon reception of one of these packets, the MAs update their routing cache. These packets are:
A beacon is periodically issued by the gateway and flooded in the network. This flooding mechanism allows
each station to know which of its interfaces must be used to forward packets towards the gateway: this is the
one from which the beacon was received.
A route update packet is sent by the MN when it first connects to the network, each time it changes of WIPPOA
and at regular time intervals. These packets are forwarded hop-by-hop towards the gateway and the stations on
their paths update their routing cache for the concerned MN: the next hop to this mobile is the MA that has
forwarded the route update.
The basic handover management in Cellular IP is called hard handoff: the MN simply transmits a route update
packet to the gateway after the radio handoff is completed to establish new routes. To improve this mechanism, the
protocol defines the so-called semi-soft handoff. Based on the reception of a SHRT by the MN before the occurrence
of the radio handoff, the mobile can send a special packet to establish a bicasting of the traffic to the old and the new
WIPPOA to reduce the packet losses. In order to reduce a potential synchronization problem between the packet flows
coming from the two WIPPOA, the Cellular IP stations must implement a delay device. This device delays the packets
transfered by the new WIPPOA during a semi-soft handoff.
Moreover, Cellular IP provides a native support for the passive connectivity with a classical paging mechanism.
The stations are grouped in paging areas. One station per area (as well as the gateway) maintains a paging cache
listing the passive mobiles inside their paging area. When a packet arrives for a passive MN, the gateway forwards
it to the station maintaining the paging cache for the current paging area of the mobile. This station then performs a
paging request procedure inside its area.
19

When a MN changes of paging area, it issues a paging update. This update is forwarded hop-by-hop towards the
gateway and must pass through the station maintaining the paging cache of the current area to allow the cache to be
updated. This forces the network to have tree-like structure as with Hierarchical Mobile IP.
B. Evaluation within our framework

Handoff With Cellular IP, the handoff mechanism triggers the MN to send a packet that is forwarded hop-by-hop
towards the gateway and must be acknowledged. The latency is thus 4?,/.1032 (time to reach the gateway and to receive its
acknowledgment) and +-,/.1032 stations are involved in the handoff process (all stations on the path to the gateway). We
can expect that no packet loss will occur with a semi-soft handoff if the crossover node receives the semi-soft handoff
packet before the radio handoff is completed. We can see that st4 0 > qv,/,/2 > must be greater than or equal to 4?DE>?F?HAH . In the
case of hard handoff, the uncertainty time is 4 prq =4?DE>?FGHH since packets are lost from the time the mobile changes of
station until the route update message reaches the crossover node.
Passive connectivity Cellular IP includes a support for this type of connectivity with a paging architecture. This
architecture is very similar to what we have seen with Hierarchical Mobile IP.
Intra-network traffic Cellular IP does not define any specific treatment for this type of traffic. A packet sent by a
MN to another MN connected to the same Cellular IP network will be transfered to the gateway or to the HA, whether
or not the route optimization is used outside the wireless domain.
Scalability and robustness Cellular IP uses a tree-like network structure, very similar to Hierarchical Mobile IP.
We have already noted that these structures, relying on some particular routers of the network, are very vulnerable
to a crash of those machines. Cellular IP, like Hierarchical Mobile IP with paging extension, puts the burden of the
paging management on one node per paging area. This choice increases the dependence of the network on those
nodes. Moreover, Cellular IP basically manages link failure or node crashes with two kinds of refresh mechanisms:
the beacon periodically transmitted by the gateway and the routing refreshes sent by the MN.
Cellular IP defines stations working with advanced layer two switch capabilities. These additionnal features are
the paging management for one station per paging area and, in the case of semi-soft handoff, Cellular IP stations must
contain a delay device.
4.2.3 HAWAII
A. Description
Unlike Cellular IP, HAWAII [33, 34] does not replace IP but works above IP. Each station inside the network must
not only act as a classical IP router but also support specific mobility functions. The basic working of HAWAII is
similar to Cellular IP: each station maintains a routing cache to manage the mobility and the hop-by-hop transmission
of special packets in the network allows the stations to update their cache. As in Cellular IP, the network is supposed to
be organized as a hierarchical tree and a single gateway is located at the root of this tree. HAWAII defines two different
handover mechanisms adapted to different radio access technologies (depending on whether the MN can communicate
with more than one base station at the same time or not). These mechanisms present different properties and can be
chosen to optimize the network with respect to packet losses, handoff latency or packet reordering. Both rely on the
assumption of the reception of a SHRT by the MN.
Like Cellular IP, HAWAII supports passive connectivity with a paging mechanism. In HAWAII, each paging area
corresponds to an IP multicast group. The stations belonging to a paging area are all member of the same multicast
group. The paging requests are transmitted to the multicast group corresponding to this area. The paging procedures
are very similar to those of Hierarchical Mobile IP and Cellular IP.
B. Evaluation within our framework
20

Handoff The handoff mechanism in HAWAII is based on an exchange of packets between the old and the new
WIPPOA. The total latency is 4 =/> 2@ . The forwarding scheme implies an uncertainty time equal to 4?prq = K4 =/> 2A@
because packets can be lost until the update message reaches the old base station. The non forwarding scheme is faster
since the packets are correctly forwarded as soon as the crossover station is aware of the handoff (this is similar to
the hard handoff in Cellular IP). In this case, assuming that the MN can be connected to two base stations, the packet
losses can be avoided if s14 0 > qu,/,/2 > is greater than or equal to 4?DE>GF?HAH . In HAWAII, only the stations located on the path
between the two concerned WIPPOAs perform a routing update. This local handoff management involves +-=/> 2A@
stations.
Passive connectivity HAWAII defines a paging architecture to support this kind of connectivity. A major difference
between Hierarchical Mobile IP, Cellular IP and HAWAII is their paging algorithm. HAWAII defines an algorithm to
dynamically balance the paging load among the stations in the network. Based on the current load of each router, a
particular station is chosen to perform each paging. The paging information is thus distributed throughout the network
to ensure that any station can perform a paging.
Intra-network traffic

HAWAII does not define any specific treatment for this type of traffic.

Scalability and robustness HAWAII relies on a tree-like wireless access network, with the same weaknesses as
Cellular IP or Hierarchical Mobile IP. However, HAWAII distributes the paging information inside the network and
assigns dynamically the paging processing. This increases its robustness but at the cost of a greater load on the routers
memory.
As HAWAII works on the top of IP, it benefits from the existing IP recovery mechanisms to manage nodes or links
failures.
HAWAII assumes that the network stations are classical IP routers with extended features. HAWAII stations must
hence act as multicast-enabled IP routers (including maintaining a routing table and actually routing the traffic) in
addition to the management of the mobility.
4.2.4 EMA
A. Description
EMA (Edge Mobility Architecture) [24, 25] defines a generic framework for the mobility management within a
wireless domain. Within this framework, it is possible, in theory, to utilize any routing protocol to forward the packets.
The authors of [24, 25] discuss the possibility of using the Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) [26, 27]
ad-hoc network routing protocol within EMA. This choice seems to ensure a good scalability for the system while
the EMA architecture allows to adapt TORA to the management of standard wireless access networks that have other
properties than ad-hoc networks.
Without any assumption on the radio access technology, EMA defines a handover mechanism completely transparent to the upper layers and even to the routing protocol. This mechanism is based on the reception of a SHRT by the
MN to initiate the handover management. It starts with a three way handshake between the two WIPPOA to establish
a soft-state tunnel between them. This tunnel is used to bicast the traffic to the MN while the network establishes one
or more new routing paths to the mobile. This is achieved by using the normal mechanisms of the chosen routing protocol. When the network has completed the handoff (i.e. updated the routing tables with the new point of attachment
of the MN), the temporary tunnel is removed. EMA defines two different schemes to perform this procedure: Break
Before Make and Make Before Break. They are used if the radio link with the old WIPPOA is lost before or after the
network has established a new routing path for the MN to the new WIPPOA.
EMA supports two types of routing: prefix-based routing (as in classical IP networks) and host specific routing.
When its connects to the EMA domain, the mobile obtains a COA from the local subnet. In this way, the packets
destined for this mobile node can be routed based on their prefix while it remains inside the subnet. When the MN
changes of subnet, host specific routes are injected in the network. TORA is well adapted to work this way.

21

The EMA architecture is hard to compare to the other micro-mobility proposals due to the use of another routing
protocol like TORA. We do not consider the impact of this protocol here since our goal in this comparison is to focus
on the properties of the EMA architecture with respect to the micro-mobility framework.
B. Evaluation within our framework
Handoff From a theorical point of view, EMA defines mechanisms to avoid packet losses if the handoff can be
anticipated. As soon as the tunnel is established, it can be used to bicast the traffic. We can thus avoid losses if
st4?0 > qv,/,?2 > is greater than or equal to the time required to perform the three way handshake: 4 =?> 2A@ .
Passive connectivity EMA does not define any specific treatment for this type of traffic.
Intra-network traffic TORA allows EMA networks to manage the intra-network traffic efficiently if the network
implements all the features of TORA.
Scalability and robustness EMA relies on TORA to manage the mobility but aims also at providing a classical
prefix-based routing by establishing both prefix and host specific routes. This seems to be a good compromise with
respect to the size of the tables in each node. However, TORA is designed to be an ad-hoc network protocol and
provides more than one route to each destination. Each node situated on a route towards a given host must maintain
information about this route (its height with respect to this destination). In large networks, the route multiplicity may
become a problem because many nodes will maintain redundant routes about MNs or subnets. Moreover, these routes
will mainly be useless since the largest part of the network is fixed and wired in contrast with ad-hoc wireless network
where the availability of more than one route is an extremely valuable feature. On this basis, the tables maintained by
each station may become larger than with other proposals (especially in the gateways) and most of this load will be
unnecessary because of the specificity of the wireless access network.

5 Conclusions
In this section we present first a summary of the different evaluations of the proposals in order to allow the reader to
have a global view of the comparison. In the second part, we present some general conclusions.

5.1 Comparison summary

5.1.1 Handoff management
It is clear that the handover management will obviously remain the most important point for the micro-mobility protocols. The micro-mobility approach within the Mobile IP framework allows to perform only one home registration
when connecting to a new domain. Inside the domain, we have two sources of latency: the move detection latency and
the IP routing update latency.
Protocols that remain totally independent of the radio layer rely entirely on a Mobile IP-like move detection
mechanism based on timers and broadcasted IP packets. This type of mechanism requires an established radio link
with the new WIPPOA. For Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-like radio technologies, this means that the radio
handoff is already done and that further latency in IP handoff may cause packet losses. In all cases, we can expect that
an IP handoff process based on this move detection will always begin after the radio handoff. In the worst case, it may
be only finished after the radio handoff and could cause packet losses. Hierarchical Mobile IP, TeleMIP and Cellular
IP (with hard handoff) are concerned with this issue.
To avoid those packet losses, the other protocols assume the possibility of what we have called a Strong Handoff
Radio Trigger (SHRT). This trigger is sent by the radio layer before the radio handoff and contains the new WIPPOA of
the concerned mobile. On this basis, it is possible to anticipate the radio handoff and, maybe, complete the IP handoff

22

before, so that no packet losses occur. For this, the SHRT must be received sufficiently in advance in time before the
radio handoff, depending on the IP routing update algorithm. This method makes thus three important assumptions:
it is possible to receive a radio handoff trigger before the actual radio handoff,
this trigger provides the new WIPPOA of the MN,
the trigger arrives sufficiently in advance before the radio handoff.
The Table 1 summarizes the different properties of the handoff management of the different micro-mobility proposals.
While it seems to be possible to receive a radio trigger before the actual radio handoff, the assumption that it
can provide the new WIPPOA of the MN is very strong. It seems more realistic to assume that we can receive a
radio trigger very soon before the handoff, based on power measurements, but this trigger is only an indication of the
imminence of a handoff, containing no new WIPPOA.
5.1.2 Passive connectivity and Paging
Only a few proposals explicitly include the support of these features: Hierarchical Mobile IP with its paging extension
[18], Cellular IP and HAWAII. These protocols use the classical cellular telephony concepts of location area and
paging. As in mobile telephony networks, the stations are grouped in paging areas and the network must perform a
paging to find the actual WIPPOA of the MN. In Hierarchical Mobile IP and Cellular IP, these paging areas must be
sub-trees of the main network hierarchy.
A major difference between Hierarchical Mobile IP, Cellular IP and HAWAII is the ability of HAWAII to distribute
the burden of paging between all stations of the network.
Passive connectivity is extremely valuable unless the mobile devices have infinite capacity batteries. The paging is
a well known and very efficient solution to this problem. It seems to us that a micro-mobility proposal should support
paging, at least as an option.
5.1.3 Intra-network traffic
Only Fast Handoff defines a routing mechanism that re-uses the informations in the visitors list to directly route the
packets whenever possible. The packets exchanged between two mobiles inside the same domain constitutes today an
important part of the wireless communications. This kind of traffic must be efficiently managed by the micro-mobility
proposals. Fast Handoff mechanism seems to be a very good solution from this point of view.
5.1.4 Scalability and robustness
A hierarchical network structure is often chosen to reduce the routing update latency. The FA based mobility management proposals, Cellular IP and HAWAII rely on a tree-like wireless access network. Indeed, a hierarchical network
allows to limit the number of nodes involved in the handoff management to a small set composed of the nodes closest
to the old and new WIPPOA. Between these nodes, control packets are quickly exchanged to establish a new routing
path at the most local level as possible. Hierarchical Mobile IP working with simultaneous bindings, for example,
seems to be a very fast way to distribute IP routing updates during a handoff.
Unfortunately, hierarchical architectures present major drawbacks with respect to robustness and scalability. The
paradox is that such structures are extremely vulnerable to a failure of one of the stations at the higher levels of the
hierarchy and that these stations are the most heavily loaded in the network. This is far from the IP philosophy
of nearly flat structures with highly decentralized algorithms. The future broadband wireless networks are expected
to support millions of customers. Robustness and scalability will be a major concern for such networks. The micromobility proposals must be able to handle such a load with appropriate mechanisms.
Table 2 summarizes the different stations requirements for each protocol.

23

24
SHRT

MN

no

yes

radio layer

radio layer

depends on TORA

depends on TORA

? ?


?

smooth handoff

TDMA

MN

radio layer

a Using

Break Before Make

SHRT

yes

radio layer

soft-state tunnels)

CDMA

Make Before Break

MN

no
no

depends on TORA

depends on TORA

EMA (using

SHRT

MN
MN

CDMA

no
SHRT

radio layer

Non-forwarding
scheme

TDMA
TDMA

yes

(old and new

FA, GFA)
(GFA, FA)
(GFA, FA, HA)

HAWAII

Hard handoff
Forwarding scheme

MN

SHRT

CDMA

Semi-soft handoff

no
no

MN
MN

radio layer

(old and new

FA)

Cellular IP

no
no

yes

TeleMIP

MN or FAs

radio layer

SHRT

CDMA

yes

With Regional Registration

Between WIPPOA
Between GFA

MN or FAs

SHRT

CDMA

radio layer

With Anchor Registration

yes

MN or FAs

SHRT

radio layer

Stations involved

Proactive Handoff

CDMA

Mobile initiated

yes

MN or FAs

radio layer

? ? ? ?

SHRT

GPRS radio layer

(
)

Uncertainty time

CDMA

Move
Detection
Latency

Target Trigger

Fast Handoff

yes

Total IP Latency

MN or FAs

no
no

no

Traffic
bicasting

SHRT

MN
MN

MN

Handoff initiator

CDMA

no
no

no

L2 trigger

Source Trigger

TDMA

inter-SGSN
RA
update (MN in
READY state)
Inside a hierarchy
Between
hierarchiesa
-

Radio
Layer

Handoff type

Hierarchical Mobile
IP

GPRS

Protocol

Table 1: Comparative chart for handoff parameters

Table 2: Comparative chart for the different stations requirements

Protocol
FA based mobility management proposals

Type of station
classical Mobile IP FA with various
extended capabilities

TeleMIP

Advanced switch with mobility capabilities (FA and GFA)

Advanced switch with paging functions and delay device

Cellular IP

HAWAII
EMA

IP router with mobility and multicast features

Ad-hoc router

Tables sizes (worst case)

At the gateway, one entry for each
MN currently connected in the hierarchy
At a GFA, one entry for each MN it
serves currently
At the gateway, one entry for each
MN currently connected to the network
Similar to Mobile IP

Load balancing
No, tree structure more loaded
around the root (the gateway)

Same as Cellular IP with redundant

routing informations within all stations

Yes, all the informations are distributed and duplicated

Yes, between the different GFAs

No, tree structure more loaded
around the root (the gateway)
Yes, for the paging

5.2 General conclusions

Based on our detailed presentation of the main IP micro-mobility protocols, we can now draw some general conclusions.
The most important problem in IP mobility is the handover management. To reduce the risk of packet losses, this
handover must be as fast and as efficient as possible. Handover management introduces two types of latencies: move
detection latency and IP routing update latency. In Mobile IP, the IP routing update is performed through a registration
process. This can take a long time but the micro-mobility approach allows to perform only one registration with the
HA when connecting for the first time to a domain.
Inside the wireless domains, some micro-mobility proposals aim at reducing the move detection latency by using
a SHRT. As we have seen, this method assumes that it is possible to receive a radio handoff trigger sufficiently in
advance in time before the actual radio handoff and that this trigger provides the new WIPPOA of the MN.
On the other hand, all proposals are concerned by reducing the routing update latency. The choice of a hierarchical
network structure allows to reduce the routing update latency. Unfortunately, we have pointed that such hierarchical
structures present drawbacks with respect to robustness and scalability.
To improve this situation, a better compromise should be found between a hierarchical structure supporting local
(and fast) handover management and a more redundant (and thus fault-tolerant) structure. Closer to IP classical
working, this solution should be as independent as possible from the radio technology. The use of load balancing in
wireless domains, such as in TeleMIP seems to be an interesting idea. It should be possible to adapt it to a structure
that allows a very local handoff management.
The assumption of the possibility of a SHRT sufficiently in advance before the radio handoff seems very strong to
us. On the other hand, the information that a radio handoff is happening is actually available, before the end of the
handoff, at least at the MN. It should be possible to use this information with a weaker assumption than the SHRT. A
simple trigger informing only the IP layer that a radio handoff is at the point to happen seems to be more realistic. It
should be possible to adapt the IP fast handover described in the different protocols to the utilization of such a trigger.
The mechanisms used by Cellular IP or Hierarchical Mobile IP appear to be the fastest on paper.

Acknowledgment
This work was funded by the Walloon region within the ARchitecture de Telecommunication Hospitali`ere pour les
services dURgence (ARTHUR) project. We would like to thank S. Uhlig, B. Quoitin, J. Daigle and the different
reviewers for their constructive comments that helped us to improve the quality of this paper.

25

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27

Acronyms
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
ARTHUR ARchitecture de Telecommunication Hospitali`ere pour les services dURgence
BSC Base Station Controller
BSS Base Station System
BTS Base Transceiver Station
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
CN Correspondent Node
COA Care Of Address
CS Circuit Switched
EMA Edge Mobility Architecture
FA Foreign Agent
FN Foreign Network
GFA Gateway Foreign Agent
GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for Mobile communication
GTP GPRS Tunneling Protocol
HA Home Agent
HLR Home Location Register
HN Home Network
ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol
IP Internet Protocol
MA Mobility Agent
MN Mobile Node
NB Node Bbasically radio transceiver
PDN Packet Data Network
PDP Packet Data Protocol
PDU Packet Data Unit
PFA Paging Foreign Agent
PS Packet Switched
28

RAN Radio Access Network

RA Routing Area
RNC Radio Network Controller
RNS Radio Network Subsystem
RSVP Resource reSerVation Protocol
SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node
SHRT Strong Handoff Radio Trigger
SMS Short Messages Service
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
TDMA Time Division Multiple Access
TMA TeleMIP Mobility Agent
TORA Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm
TeleMIP Telecommunication-Enhanced Mobile IP Architecture
UCN UMTS Core Network
UDP User Datagram Protocol
UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunication System
URNC UMTS Radio Network Controller
UTRAN Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network
WIPPOA Wireless IP Point of Attachment
WLAN Wireless LAN

29