SDN-FHOR-DMM: a software defined network (SDN)-based fast handover with the optimal routing control method for distributed mobility management (DMM)

Distributed mobility management (DMM), which is a promising mobility management protocol, is designed for flattening the network architecture to resolve the problems of scalability and reliability existed in mobile Internet. Although software defined network (SDN) has been applied to network-based mobility protocols to enhance the performance, the current network-based mobility management schemes still suffer the high signaling cost, handover delay and packet loss during the handover processing. In this paper, an software defined network (SDN)-based fast handover with the optimal routing control method for distributed mobility management (DMM) was proposed. SDN-FHOR-DMM can (i) let MNs have the higher chance of being in the predictive mode, in which the handover preparation processing can be finished before MN disconnecting from the current Mobility Anchor and Access Router’s (MAAR’s) domain and connecting with the new MAAR’s domain, (ii) support the optimal routing between MN and corresponding node (CN) through the help of the SDN Controller to have the optimal transmission path for the on-going packets from CN to MN to improve the handover performance. The performance analysis has shown that the proposed SDN-FHOR-DMM method has the better performance than the traditional DMM method and other method in terms of signaling overhead, handover latency, throughput and packets loss.