Efficient network mobility support scheme for proxy mobile IPv6

The recent rapid proliferation of mobile devices has significantly increased the importance of network mobility (NEMO) technology for Internet access, which enables all the nodes within a mobile network to provide session continuity when the mobile network moves. This paper proposes an efficient network mobility support scheme with direct home network prefix (HNP) assignment to reduce the location update cost and packet tunneling cost. In the proposed scheme, the moving mobile access gateway (mMAG), instead of the local mobility anchor (LMA), assigns a mobile node (MN)’s HNP using a sub-prefix of its own HNP when an MN is attached to the mMAG. An IP address swapping mechanism is used to deliver the packets destined for MNs moved to the mMAG without an additional tunnel header. In the proposed scheme, the mMAG also performs a location update on behalf of the MNs. Therefore, the proposed scheme can reduce both the location update cost and the packet tunneling cost. Numerical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of the total cost, throughput, and signaling overhead.