LTE Mobility Solutions at Network Level for Global Convergence

One of the research challenges for next generation all-IP-based wireless systems is the design of intelligent mobility management techniques that take advantage of IP-based technologies to achieve global seamless roaming among various access technologies. Since Mobile IPv6 is considered a mature protocol, mobility management at the network layer is the frequent approach for heterogeneous networks. The tendency of future convergent scalable architectures is splitting the mobility management in two domains, global mobility and localized mobility management. This chapter presents the advantages of MIPv6, a global mobility protocol, and its enhancements. A case study based on MIPv6 for UMTS and WiFi convergence is also presented. Proxy MIPv6, the newest protocol of the MIPv6 family, already included in the roadmap of future 4G networks, will be analyzed as a solution for localized mobility management. The main goal of the chapter is describing the way mobility protocols (MIPv6 and PMIPv6) will be implemented for the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution architecture. The chapter ends with the presentation of the interoperation between different network technologies using global and localized mobility management protocols, which provide flexibility, scalability and independence between mobility domains.