Network Provisioning for High Speed Vehicles Moving along Predictable Routes - Part 1: Spiderman Handover

This report presents our on-going work on a new system designed to provide a continuous network connectivity to communicating devices located on-board a vehicle moving at ”high speed” with a predictable trajectory such as trains, subways or buses. The devices on-board the vehicle form a sub-network called the ”in-motion network”. This system we propose is composed of two parts. The mobile part, called Spiderman Device (SD), installed on the roof of the vehicle, and the fixed part is composed of multiples access points, called Wireless Switch Access Points (WS APs), installed along the predictable route of the vehicle. To provide a continuous connectivity, we designed a new handover algorithm that relies on a two IEEE802.11 radio hardware placed in the SD device. This dual-radio architecture allows to minimize or even hide the handover effects, achieving a seamless continuous data-link connection at high speeds, up-to 150 Km/h and possibly more. The link between the SD and the WS AP forms a Layer 2 Ethernet Bridge, supporting any Layer 3 protocol between the infrastructure network and the in-motion network. This concept has been validated by simulations and is currently tested using a real prototype in order to assess the performances and practical feasibility of the system.