Experiments on Handover Using Combination of Bicast and Forwarding of IP Packet for Future IP-Based RANs

Motohiro TANNO  Akihito MORIMOTO  Kenichi HIGUCHI  Mamoru SAWAHASHI  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E92-B   No.5   pp.1735-1742
Publication Date: 2009/05/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1345
DOI: 10.1587/transcom.E92.B.1735
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: Special Section PAPER (Special Section on Radio Access Techniques for 3G Evolution)
Category: 
Keyword: 
handover,  bicast,  forwarding,  experiment,  radio access network,  

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Summary: 
This paper proposes a handover method that uses a combination of bicast and forwarding (BIFO) of IP packets to achieve a short handover delay. BIFO achieves a lower amount of IP packet traffic in the backhaul for future IP-based radio access networks (RANs) than the bicast only method. To validate the effect of the proposed BIFO, we implement prototype experimental equipment comprising a RAN_access router (RAN_AR), Node Bs associated with a radio control server (RCS), and user equipment (UE) including a controller. The experimental results show that BIFO achieves a shorter handover delay than the conventional bicast method or forwarding method by taking advantage of the respective merits of bicast and forwarding. The results also confirm that BIFO achieves the handover delay time in the control plane of approximately 10-20 msec.