Mobility management in heterogeneous IP networks: Dissertation

The availability of different wireless access networks offers new possibilities to create and use new services. Mobile users are able to use these services whenever and wherever they choose. Also the current trend of using online social services increases the number of users and mobile devices. The heterogeneity of the access networks in current architectures sets also several technical challenges. One of the key challenges is the support for mobility between different access networks: the mobility should be seamless to the users so that there is no interruption in the services used. This dissertation discusses research challenges and problems caused by the heterogeneity of access networks. The work includes a study and development of mechanisms, which will enable and help to achieve seamless mobility in heterogeneous environment. Included is also an analysis of the current mobility management functions and protocols. The functionalities of several standard state-of-the art IP mobility protocols are introduced and the challenges of the heterogeneous environment are addressed. A special focus is on solving problems caused by mobility protocol handovers, handover decisions and on collecting and distributing mobility related information. This dissertation also shows how mobility management can work as a distributed solution in the current and future network architectures. The work resulted in several new functionalities for mobility management: a new mobility protocol, a new system for controlling vertical handovers and a framework, supporting collection, processing and distribution of mobility related events. The discussion of the problems in the heterogeneous networks and the new functionalities developed are summarized, with the detailed results and evaluation studies.