Michelle Perras

Mobility for heterogeneous SmallNets

In this paper we consider mobility in a network of converged small-cell gateways, each capable of aggregating cellular and unlicensed bandwidth by combining a WiFi Access Point and a cellular base station within a single-box. A network of such gateways must provide mobility services in a decentralized fashion and we demonstrate how this may be accomplished by taking advantage of Proxy Mobile IPv6 the network-based version of the Mobile IP protocol. We also describe how throughput may be increased and Internet Protocol Flows may be maintained when either the cellular or WiFi connections degrade, improving the user experience. Furthermore, we show how the networks of gateways can be used to offload the mobile core network, using the concepts of Selected Internet Protocol Traffic Offload and Distributed Mobility Management.