HH-MIP: An Enhancement of Mobile IP by Home Agent Handover

We propose an enhancement of Mobile IP (MIP) called MIP with Home Agent Handover (HH-MIP) to enjoy most of the advantages of Route Optimization MIP (ROMIP) but with only a small increase of signaling overhead. In HH-MIP, the concept of Temporary HA (THA) is proposed and the mobile host (MH) registers the new CoA with its THA rather than its original HA. Since the THA of an MH is selected to be close to the current location of MH, HH-MIP reduces the handoff latency and shortens the signaling path of registration as well. Moreover, HH-MIP adopts an aggressive approach in selecting THA for an MH, that is, whenever an MH is moving away from its HA or previous THA, the MH triggers the handover of THA. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the proposed scheme enjoys small handoff latency as well as routing efficiency, and the signaling cost of the proposed scheme is significantly less than that in ROMIP.