Mobility management and control protocol for wireless ATM networks

Abstract

The introduction of wireless ATM in customer premises network environments necessitates the design of mobility signaling protocols, since the existing versions of B-ISDN signaling do not support terminal mobility. Such protocols can be deployed either as extensions to the standard signaling capabilities, or as individual solutions that have little or no impacton existing infrastructures (switches, signaling software, etc.). AWATM architecture that adopts the latter approach is presented. After a discussion of the problems encountered in the integration of wireless networking and B-ISDN ATM technologies, a Mobility Management and Control (MMC) protocol is proposed. Finally, in the framework of the proposed MMC protocol, algorithms for implementing mobility procedures (handover and registration) are described.