Mobility Across Multiple Technologies —the Daidalos Approach

Abstract

The paper describes a network architecture, studied within the Daidalos EU project, which supports seamless communication mobility across multiple technologies at the IP layer. The architecture implements an approach to heterogeneity management in which supporting functions are distributed among the end-devices and the network infrastructure. It supports both mobile- and network-initiated handovers, managed in a technology-independent way. The architecture incorporates a cross-layer design of supporting functions, resulting in enhanced reliability and good performance. A high degree of security is achieved with a combination of security protocols that govern terminal bootstrapping, user registration in the network and handover process.
The solution is generic. It is being tested in different network environments of single-hop radio access networks (802.11, 802.16, TD-CDMA) and broadcast networks (DVB-T). It will also be tested soon in multi-hop ad-hoc (802.11e) and in moving networks (NEMO).