Efficient handoff decision algorithm using differential RSSI in MPLS-based mobile multicast network

Abstract

This thesis presents a handoff algorithm to reduce handoff blocking rate in Multi-protocol Label Switching (MPLS)-based Mobile Multicast networks. A new Label Switched Path (LSP) must be established between rendezvous point to new egress Label Edge Router (LER) whenever the mobile host changes its location in MPLS-based Mobile Multicast Networks. This condition causes a join latency time and service disruption during handoff. When the mobile host is moved to another cell, a handoff request may be rejected because of the lack of resource. To provide Quality of Service (QoS) in MPLS-based Mobile Multicast networks, it is very important to reduce handoff drops due to insufficient bandwidth in the target region where the mobile node wants to move. In order to solve this problem, we propose an efficient handoff decision algorithm that considers the status of bandwidth in the decision of handoff. If the resource status of the target cell that a mobile node is going to move is in congestion, we apply our proposed handoff algorithm to decide handoff in the overlapped region within connection timeout. It has the following features: (1) Classification of two types of bandwidth, the reserved bandwidth and active bandwidth, (2) Separation of reservation phase from the handoff execution phase and (3) Usage of differential RSSI value to acknowledge mobile node direction. In the performance analysis, we show that our proposed handoff algorithm reduces the handoff blocking probability with almost the same new connection blocking probability and bandwidth utilization.