Systems Optimization for Mobility Management

Аннотация

Wireless network mobility frees the user from location dependence but requires additional mechanism to preserve network connectivity. Mobility events occur when user movement causes one network connection to be replaced by another. A network connection has associated with it properties, for example, network attachment points, network identifiers, and security associations. The mechanisms supporting mobility events rebind these properties, often requiring operations at multiple layers of the protocol stack. The rebinding is a sequential process and each process takes a finite amount of time. This overall process generates a period of time in which network service is degraded by transient data loss and increased end-to-end delay. Application specific and protocol specific ad hoc solutions are available for mitigating the service disruption. However, formal techniques to characterize this problem and to develop optimization methodologies for these processes have not been studied. This dissertation develops a systematic and formalized systems model that analyzes the basic operations associated with a mobility event, studies the behavioral properties of the system and characterizes several systems optimization techniques for these processes.