Mobility management using virtual domain in IPv6-based cellular networks

Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) has been proposed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to compensate for such problems as handover latency and signaling overheads in employing Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6). However, HMIPv6 causes load concentration at a particular MAP and longer handover latency when inter-domain handover occurs. In order to solve such problems, this paper establishes a virtual domain (VD) of a higher layer MAP and proposes a MAP changing scheme. The mobile node (MN) changes the routing path between an MN and a correspondent node (CN) according to the mobile position and the direction of the MN before inter-domain handover occurs. We simulate the performance of the MAP changing scheme and compare with HMIPv6. We also analyze the MAP changing scheme through numerical modeling in comparison with other schemes.