An adaptive multipath protocol for efficient IP handoff in mobile wireless networks

Achieving IP handoff with a short latency and minimal packet loss is essential for mobile devices that roam across IP subnets. Many existing solutions require changes to be made to the network or transport layer, and they tend to suffer from long handoff latency in either soft or hard hand-off scenario, or both; and some are difficult to deploy in practice. We propose a new protocol, called the adaptive multipath protocol, to achieve efficient IP handoff. Based on link-layer signal strength measurements, two different schemes are used to handle soft and hard handoff respectively. Seamless IP handoff is achieved by using multiple transport layer connections on top of persistent link-layer connectivity during soft handoff. To achieve low hand-off latency during hard handoff, a set of distributed sessions repositories (SRs), which are independent of the end hosts, are employed. Simulation results clearly support our claims. In particular, the latency for hard handoff is found to be as low as 50% of that of Fast handoff.