Hierarchical Mobile Network Routing: Route Optimization and Micro-Mobility Support for NEMO

Abstract

A lot of recent research has been focused on developing network mobility management to support the movement of a mobile network consisting of several mobile nodes. The IETF NEMO working group proposed the NEMO basic support protocol that defines a methodology for supporting such network mobility using bi-directional tunneling between the home agent and the mobile router. However, this protocol has been found to suffer from the so-called ’dog-leg problem’, and despite alternative research efforts to solve this problem, there are still limitations in the efficiency of real time data transmission and intra-domain communication. Accordingly, the current paper proposes a new route optimization methodology that uses unidirectional tunneling and a tree-based intra-domain routing mechanism. As such, the proposed scheme can provide faster signaling and data transmission and be easily extended to support micro-mobility without any additional extensions. The performance of the proposed scheme is also evaluated to demonstrate its efficiency.