A Cross-Layering Design for IPv6 Fast Handover Support in an IEEE 802.16e Wireless MAN

Broadband wireless access networks, such as the IEEE 802.16 standard for wireless metropolitan area networks (WMANs), aim to provide high bandwidth, low-cost, scalable solutions that extend multimedia services from backbone networks to wireless users. Because of a larger coverage area, portability and mobility have become significant issues for providing high quality mobile services, as it is crucial to minimize handover latency and maintain IP session continuity. As a result, such issues were addressed by the IEEE 802.16e task group on the mobile WMAN. However, the scope of the IEEE 802.16e standard did not include cross-layering approaches for the enhancement of upper layer handover performance. This article proposes a new cross-layering design for fast IPv6 handover support over IEEE 802.16e. First, we describe the IEEE 802.16 deployment architectures, as well as the link layer, handover procedures in IEEE 802.16e. Next, we describe the operation of fast IPv6 handover and point out the need for interaction between the network layer and the link layer for proper performance. Then, we propose a new cross-layering design to achieve a proper behavior of the fast IPv6 handover over IEEE 802.16e. Finally, we present handover scenarios for the proposed techniques and discuss the major factors that contribute to the handover latency.