Cost-Effective MAP Selection in HMIPv6 Networks

In hierarchical mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) networks, the system performance is critically affected by the selection of mobile anchor points (MAPs) and its load status. Thus, in this paper, we introduce two novel dynamic MAP selection schemes for HMIPv6, that relieve overloaded MAPs as well as select a more suitable MAP according to each mobile node (MN)'s up-to- date mobility towards reducing inter-domain handover, resulting in saving the overall signaling cost. Further, we develop an analytical model of the average signaling cost for inter-domain handover to investigate the performance of another existing approach with its basis on IETF HMIPv6 as well as our schemes. We also perform simulations to evaluate the performance of our proposed schemes. It is shown via simulation and numerical results that the proposed dynamic MAP selection schemes can significantly reduce the number of inter-domain handovers and the average signaling cost as well as distribute load over multiple MAPs compared to another existing approach.