A Seamless Mobility Scenario for IP over WiMAX

WiMAX is a broadband wireless access technology facing the challenges of 3G and beyond communication systems. As frequency licensing is becoming commercially available throughout the world, it is still unclear whether WiMAX will be better positioned than its main competitors, such as UMTS. Therefore, it is critical to evaluate the technology within the foreseen all-IP communications. In the context of the WEIRD project, an architecture that includes the WiMAX technology in an all-IP communication system has been developed. The main capabilities of the WEIRD system include mechanisms to support adequate quality of service levels for a broad range of applications, from basic web traffic to multimedia and specialized applications, such as telemedicine and fire prevention. This paper presents a solution for macro mobility in an all-IP network with WiMAX as the access technology, based on the basic WEIRD architecture. The proposed approach has been implemented on a test-bed of the WEIRD system and evaluated in order to address the impact of the developed mechanisms upon the overall system performance. The results have shown that the mobility mechanisms introduce a rather small overhead, while having the capability to support a “

make-before-break

” handover process.