Hierarchical mobile network routing: Route optimization and micro‐mobility support for NEMO

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.