Special issue: mobile IP

WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2006; 6:543–546 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/wcm.409

Guest Editorial Special Issue: Mobile IP By Han-Chieh Chao, Lorna Uden and Frank Y. Shih, Guest Editors

Mobile Computing that allows networked communication while a user is on the move is revolutionizing the way we use computers today. New protocols have been developed in order to meet the multifunction requirements of both telecommunication and data communications. Protocols such as W-CDMA, CDMA-2000, 802.11a, 802.11b, or 802.11g, were designed to meet different needs in mobile networks. While Internet technologies have succeeded in overcoming the barriers of time and distance, they have yet to fully accommodate the increasing mobile computer usage. This is particularly true of the emerging 3G mobile networks. The use of 3G networks are not based on only one standard, but several such as CDMA-2000, EDGE, and WCDMA. There is a need for a common mobility solution to be adopted that would include independence of access network technologies and common solutions for fixed and wireless networks. Mobile IP is a promising technology to serve this purpose. It provides seamless mobility solution among the diversity of access. Mobile IP requires new network elements and specifies a protocol for the interaction of the new components and the host. In the mobile network area, the trend is to move from traditional circuit-switched systems to packetswitched programmable networks that integrate both voice and packet services, eventually evolving toward an all-IP network. Both RFC3775 (Mobility Support in IPv6) and RFC 3776 (Using IPsec to Protect Mobile IPv6 Signaling between Mobile Nodes and Home Agents) were released in June 2004. Mobile IP has been perceived as the potential future mobility standard. The Call for Papers attracted 30 submissions from Asia, Europe, and the America covering a lot of topics in the field of the Mobile IP networks. Each paper was carefully evaluated by three reviewers. This careful Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

evaluation process has allowed us to select 11 high quality research papers. Paper seven is an invited review/survey paper. We strongly believe that the selected papers make a significant contribution to researchers, practitioners, and students working in the area of the Wireless Communications and in the specific field of Mobile IP. We are grateful to authors for their research contributions in this special issue. Our special thanks go to the WCMC Editorial Board, Prof. Mohsen Guizani, and Prof. Hsiao-Hwa Chen for their supports throughout the publication process. Finally, the Guest Editors wish to gratefully acknowledge all those who have generously given their time to review the papers submitted to this Special Issue. The 11 accepted papers can be grouped into three categories. Five papers relate to mobility management and home agent assignment. Four papers are concerned with handoff issues. The last two papers deal with MANET. The first paper, ‘An Integrated Performance Model of TCP and Mobility Management Protocols’ by Antonios Argyriou presents a joint performance evaluation model of TCP and TFRC, with the underlying IP-based mobility protocols. Stochastic models are developed that can characterize the protocol performance during handoff between heterogeneous wireless networks like WLAN, cellular, or WMAN. The second paper, ‘On the Performance of Proactive Mobile IPv6 for Context-aware all-IP Wireless Access Networks’ by Theo Pagtzis, Jon Crowcroft, and Keith Clark contrasts the efficiency of proactive context-state establishment, between candidate points of attachment (PoAs), against reactive MIPv6 standard practices over handoff delay, jitter, and associated packet loss. Departing from reactive MIPv6 standards, this study brings new insights towards

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seamless handoffs by investigating the influential aspects of non-determinism in the mobility pattern of the MN. The third paper, ‘SIP Mobility and IPv4/IPv6 DualStack Supports in 3G IP Multimedia Subsystem’ by Shiang-Ming Huang, Quincy Wu, Yi-Bing Lin, and Che-Hua Yeh has developed the first non-commercial Linux-based Teredo mechanism, and compared their solution with other Teredo implementations in the public domain. The study indicates that this solution can reduce the tunneling overhead and transmission delay over two other implementations by 44 to 74 per cent. The fourth paper, ‘Improving Handoff Performance in Wireless Overlay Networks by Switching between Two-Layer IPv6 and One-Layer IPv6 Addressing’ by Jyh-Cheng Chen, Yi-Wen Liu, and Li-Wei Lin proposes the dynamic external Home Agent (x-HA) assignment in mobile Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). The proposed architecture is based on the mobile VPN proposed by the IETF, which adopts Mobile IP and IPsec. The x-HA is assigned dynamically so the handoff latency and end-to-end latency could be reduced significantly. The fifth paper, ‘Global Dynamic Home Agent Discovery on Mobile IPv6’ by Yun-Sheng Yen, Chia-Chang Hsu, and Han-Chieh Chao attempts to construct a scalable mobile IPv6 global network anycast by dynamically determining the nearest home agent to the current home agent for registration and transmission. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can save bandwidth and reduce delay even with mobile node handoff phase. The sixth paper, ‘A Simulation Study of IP-based Vertical Handoff in Wireless Convergent Networks’ by Jung Kee Song and Wenye Wang evaluates the performance of mSCTP and MIP by introducing handoff delay, end-to-end transmission throughput, and packet loss, and verify their observations by a simulation study of the two protocols in UMTS/802.11b integrated networks using NS-2 network simulator. Simulation shows that mSCTP provides quasi-seamless IP-based handoff regardless of scale of mobility in heterogeneous network environments. The seventh paper (Invited Article), ‘Fast movement detection in IEEE 802.11networks’ by Nicolas Montavont and Thomas Noel proposes a solution framework for Mobile IPv6 to anticipate movement over IEEE 802.11 networks. Layer 2 triggers such as the signal strength is used to trigger in advance scanning phases, in which a mobile device probes the adjacent access points. This scanning phase is Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

performed alternatively with communication. Simulation results show that this method performs well and enhance both the layer 2 and the layer 3 handover. The impact of handovers on real time applications is also considerably minimized. The eighth paper, ‘A Fast Handoff Method in Mobile IPv6 Using Prerouting’ by Chia-Shien Lu and Ruay-Shiung Chang has developed a new fast handoff routing method, called fast handoff using prerouting, for mobile IPv6. The new routing method will improve the packet delay and save the bandwidth during handoff. It routes the packet to the destination before the mobile node finishes its route update to the corresponding node (CN). It can also save the bandwidth wasted in tunneling during route update to CN. Special agents attached to the access routers and border routers are proposed to help prerouting. The ninth paper, ‘Mobile IPv6-based Efficient Vertical Handoff Approach for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks’ by Ben-Jye Chang and Shu-Yu Lin proposes an efficient cost-based vertical handoff algorithm to reduce unnecessary handoffs while increasing network throughput, decreasing handoff delay, and avoiding connection dropping. Two primary motivations of this paper include the prediction of node mobility from RSS and the adaptive cost-based competitive on-line (COL) method to determine the optimal network to handoff to from all available candidates. Furthermore, message flows of vertical handoffs between 3G/UMTS and WLAN as well as horizontal handoff between WLANs with MIPv6 are expressed in detail. The tenth paper, ‘A Partition Network Model for Ad Hoc Networks in Overlay Environments’ by Yueh-Min Huang, Tzu-Chiang Chiang, and Ting-Wei Hou describes the adapted partition network model for ad hoc networks in overlay environments. The main objective is to perform efficiently the behaviors of virtual subnets in ad hoc networks. An interoperability network model integrating a self-organizing ad hoc network and the Internet/a conventional network with the same virtual subnet is proposed. Moreover, a protocol to establish the virtual broadcast domains by using the IPv6 address concept in ad hoc networks and perform IP-based network communications in a multi-switch backbone has been described. The eleventh paper, ‘F-PCM: A Fragmentationbased Power Control MAC Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Mobile Ad Hoc Networks’ by Dongkyun Kim and C. K. Toh describes an efficient protocol called F-PCM, which utilizes the fragmentation Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2006; 6:543–546

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mechanism of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol so as to avoid collisions at senders as well as those at receivers. Through extensive simulations, the F-PCM has performed better in terms of providing a higher throughput and incurring lower energy consumption. Han-Chieh Chao National Ilan University, Taiwan Lorna Uden Staffordshire University, UK Frank Y. Shih New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA

Guest Editors’ Biographies Han-Chieh Chao is a Full Professor jointly appointed in the Department of Electronic Engineering, and Institute of Computer Science & Information Engineering. He also serves as the Dean for the College of the Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and the Director of the Computer & IT Center, National Ilan University, I-Lan, Taiwan, R.O.C. His research interests include High Speed Networks, Wireless Networks, IPv6 based Networks, Digital Creative Arts and Digital Divide. He received his MS and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1989 and 1993 respectively. He has authored or co-authored 4 books and has published about 140 refereed professional research papers. He has completed 39 MSEE thesis students. Dr. Chao has received many research awards, including Purdue University SRC awards, and NSC research awards (National Science Council of Taiwan). He also received many funded research grants from NSC, Ministry of Education (MOE), RDEC, Industrial Technology of Research Institute, Institute of Information Industry, and FarEasTone Telecommunications Lab. Dr. Chao has been invited frequently to give talks at national and international conferences and research organizations. Dr. Chao is also serving as an IPv6 Steering Committee member and co-chair of R&D division of the NICI (National Information and Communication Initiative, a ministry level government agency which aims to integrate domestic IT and Telecom projects of Taiwan), co-chair of the Technical Area for IPv6 Forum Taiwan, the executive editor of the Journal of Internet Technology, and the Editor-in-Chief for International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology and International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing. Dr. Chao is an IEEE senior member. Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Lorna Uden is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Computer, Engineering and Technology at Staffordshire University in the U.K. She received her B.Sc. from Aston University, B.A. from the Open University and her Ph.D. from Staffordshire University. She has published over 100 papers in conferences, journals, chapters of books, and workshops. Her research interests include Learning Technology, Web Engineering and Technology, Human Computer Interaction, Groupware, Activity Theory, E-business, knowledge management, E-government, semantic web, web services, and Problem-Based Learning (PBL). She co-authored the book, Technology and Problem—Based Learning published by Ideal publishers. Dr. Uden is a program committee member of many international conferences and workshops. She is on the editorial board of several international journals including Journal of Internet Technology, International Journal of Web Based Communities, International Journal of Web Information Systems, Business Process Management Journal, and International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation. She is editor of the International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology (IJWET) and the International Journal of Learning Technology (IJLT), published by Inderscience, U.K. Dr. Uden has been visiting professor to China, Taiwan, Finland, Spain, and Slovenia. She has been keynote speaker at several international conferences. She is head of the Knowledge Management in Organisations (KMO) involving universities from India, Slovenia, and Finland.

Frank Y. Shih received his B.S. degree from National Cheng-Kung University, Taiwan, in 1980, his M.S. degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 1984, and his Ph.D. degree from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, in 1987, all in Electrical Engineering. He is presently a professor jointly appointed in the Department of Computer Science (CS), the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ. He currently serves as the Director of Computer Vision Laboratory. Dr. Shih is currently on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Pattern Recognition, the International Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence, the International Journal of Internet Protocol Technology, and the Journal of Internet Technology. He previously served as an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Systems Integration and the International Journal of Information Sciences. He has contributed as a steering member, committee member, and session chair for numerous professional conferences and workshops. He was the recipient of the Research Initiation Award from the National Science Foundation in 1991. He won the Honorable Mention Award from the International Pattern Recognition Society for Outstanding Paper and also won the Best Paper Award in the International Symposium Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2006; 6:543–546

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on Multimedia Information Processing. He has received several awards for distinguished research at New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has served several times on the Proposal Review Panel of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Shih holds the research fellow for the American Biographical Institute and the IEEE senior membership.

Copyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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He has published 7 book chapters and over 180 technical papers, including 80 in well-known prestigious journals. His current research interests include image processing, computer vision, sensor networks, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, information security, robotics, fuzzy logic, and neural networks.

Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput. 2006; 6:543–546