A Study on IEEE 802.

21 MIH Frameworks in
Heterogeneous Wireless Networks
Moon Kim, Tae-wook Moon, Sung-joon Cho
Dept. of Inform. & Telecom. Eng., Graduate School of Korea Aerospace University
moonkim@kau.ac.kr
Abstract - In recent years, various wireless access
technologies have continuously grown as well as user demands
have. However, such user demands have not been satisfied by
each wireless access technology alone. Therefore, the Future
Generation Networks (FGNs) are proposed to integrate various
heterogeneous access technologies in order to support both
vertical and seamless handovers. Especially, the IEEE 802.21
specifies Media Independent Handover (MIH) services to
enhance the mobile user experience by optimizing handovers
between heterogeneous access networks. In this paper, we focus
on the handover framework using MIH messages, and adjust the
framework to the integrated heterogeneous networks by
employing novel messages. We additionally evaluate the
performance of the proposed MIH framework in terms of
handover latency by using numerical analysis.
Keywords - Heterogeneous networks, 802.21, MIH, FGN,
Vertical handover.
1. Introduction
In recent years, various wireless access technologies such
as Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), Code
Division Multiple Access 2000 (CDMA2000), Universal
Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), Wireless Local
Area Networks (WLAN), and Worldwide Interoperability for
Microwave Access (WiMax) have tremendously evolved and
deployed all over the world. Moreover the user demands for
higher service quality including higher data rate, higher
mobility, and Quality of Service (QoS) have continuously
grown in these days. However, such user demands have not
been fulfilled by each wireless access technology alone. The
complementary characteristics ofWLAN, faster but stationary,
do not provide high mobility but high data rate, while the
complementary characteristics of CDMA 2000, slower but
highly mobile, do not provide high data rate but high mobility.
Therefore, the Future Generation (or 4G) Networks (FGN) are
integrating those multiple heterogeneous wireless access
technologies into a common convergence network [1, 2].
The convergence network has been broadly applied to the
common effort among mobile operators and standards bodies
to achieve the ubiquitous, the key point of the future
generation networks. Such ubiquitous networks are expected
to guarantee 'any-service with any-device through
any-network at any-where in any-time'. In order to support
this ubiquitous service, there are crucial requirements which
are very high data rate for 'any-service', multi-interface
systems for 'any-device', integrated heterogeneous networks
and high mobility for 'any-network', and so on. Consequently,
it is essential that multi-interface systems roam seamlessly
across heterogeneous wireless access networks.
The IEEE 802.21 is proposing the Media Independent
Handover (MIH) Services to enhance the handovers across
heterogeneous access networks, i.e. vertical handover, and to
optimize the service (or session) continuity during handovers,
i.e. seamless handover. For this reason, MIH provides generic
link layer intelligence and other related network information
to upper layers. Particularly, MIH offers a framework of the
message flows between handover-related entities to provide
information on handover candidate networks and to deliver
handover commands [3, 4].
In this paper, we focus on the framework of handover
message flows in MIH and suit the framework to integrated
heterogeneous networks for FGN. We further approach the
balance of the MIH message use. The balance is assumed to
mean that the more resources are, the more message capacities
are. Note that wired networks have much more resources (or
bandwidth) than wireless networks have. So the balance is
assumed that wired network is given more messages to process
than wireless network. Aiming at offering the balance, we
specify novel messages, the handover profile message and the
entrusting message, to improve the handover framework.
These messages are designed to provide each user's handover
policies to network entities and to reduce the size ofthe legacy
messages respectively.
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows. In the
next section, we explain the MIH fundamentals such as
functions and services. In section 3, we describe the
framework of MIH message flows and suit the framework to
heterogeneous wireless networks. Section 4 evaluates the
performance of the MIH framework through numerical
analysis, and then we conclude this paper in section 5.
2. Media Independent Handover Services
The IEEE 802.21 draft specification, referred as Media
Independent Handover Services, provides generic link layer
intelligence and other related network information to upper
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layers. The goal is to enhance the mobile user experience by
optimizing handovers between heterogeneous access networks.
This includes media types specified by Third Generation (3G)
Partnership Project (3GPP), 3G Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2),
and both wired and wireless media in the IEEE 802 family of
standards.
MIH is an evolution for all media, providing capabilities to
detect and initiate handover from one media to another (i.e.
vertical handovers). It also offers solutions for service (or
session) continuity while vertical handovers occur (i.e.
seamless handover). In order to support both vertical and
seamless handovers, MIH provides information on potential
handover target networks and delivers commands about
handovers. Furthermore, it reports dynamic events relating to
link layer triggers, measurement reports, and timely
indications of changes in link conditions. These roles speed
vertical handovers while helping to keep end-to-end service
continuity [3, 4].
The IEEE 802.21 Working Group (WG) introduces a
framework that defines Media Independent Handover
Function (MIHF). It is logically designed as a shim layer
between the link layer (L2) and upper layers in the protocol
stack of both the Mobile Node (MN) and network element.
Figure 1 shows the placement of MIHF within the mobility
management protocol stack and the interaction of MIHF with
the link layer and upper layers. As using this interaction,
MIHF facilitates both vertical and seamless handovers across
heterogeneous access networks. Especially, MIHF employs
three kinds of services as the key element of the interaction.
These services are responsible for provision of handover-
related information such as link status, link layer intelligence,
serving and neighboring access networks information, and
operation policies. In addition, they help upper layers
coordinate and manage handovers, while supporting
Upper Layers
CoMectiorI II
M a ~ p ~
Handover Management
Link Layer
I IEEE II ..IEEE II .. E. 1
3GPP
.. . ..II3GPP2. I 802.3 802.11 16
Figure 1. MIHF location and MIH key services
both network-initiated and mobile-initiated handovers. The
above three services are Media Independent Event Service
(MIES), Media Independent Command Service (MICS), and
Media Independent Information Service (MIlS).
Media Independent Event Service
MIES provides event classification, event filtering and event
reporting services corresponding to dynamic changes in link
characteristics, links status, and link qualities. It also indicates
the result of management actions and commands on a part of
networks. Furthermore, it allows upper layers to treat all
access technologies in a generic manner. MIHF registers Link
Event notifications with the interfaces. Any upper layers
entities can register for an MIH Event notification. The lower
layers will generate a Link Event and send it to the MIH
Function which will report to any entity that has registered an
MIH Event.
Media Independent Command Service
MICS allows MIHF to query neighboring link resources, and
so helps them manage and control link behavior relevant to
handovers by using a set of primitives and commands. It also
enables both network-initiated and mobile-initiated handovers.
MIH Commands originate from the upper layers down to the
MIH Function. It continues down to the link layers as a Link
Command from the MIH Function. Link Commands are
specific to the access network being used.
Media Independent Information Service
MIlS offers a mechanism for an MIHF entity to access the
fundamental information about heterogeneous neighboring
access networks, network topology, properties, and available
services in order to facilitate the handover process. It further
defines query and response messages to ask and get such
information for each available neighbor networks. MIlS
specifies a two way street to share Information Element (IE),
which represents the information of heterogeneous access
networks, with Information Server (IS) [3-7].
3. Handover Frameworks Using MIH
The IEEE 802.21 MIH offers a framework of the message
flows between handover-related entities to provide
information on handover candidate networks and to deliver
commands about handovers. As shown at Figure 2 and 3, the
framework consists of MIH discovery, MIH selection,
mobility management, and MIH completion. During the MIH
discovery phase, both information query to IS and resource
availability check through neighboring access networks are
performed respectively. The MIH selection phase allows the
handover initiator, i.e. either MN or serving network, to decide
the handover target network in result of MIH discovery, and
also requests resource preparation to the target network. The
following phase is the mobility management execution. It
comes up with both the establishment of link layer connection
and the upper layer handover execution. Lastly, resource
release is performed by either MN or target network. The
framework of MIH message flows supports both
mobile-initiated and network-initiated handover process. The
mobile-initiated handover process is illustrated in Figure 2,
ISBN 978-89-5519-139-4 -243- Feb. 15-18, 20091CACT 2009
while the network-initiated handover process is described in
Figure 3 [8].
In this paper, we focus on the balance of the MIH message
flows. The balance is assumed to mean that the more resources
are, the more message capacity are. Note that wired networks
have much more resources (or bandwidth) than wireless
networks have. So the balance is assumed that the networks
above PoAs, i.e. wired networks, is given more messages to
process than the networks beyond PoAs, i.e. wireless networks.
In order to offer the balance, we newly define the handover
framework using MIH messages. It introduces the initiation
phase to provide information about not only user's handover
policies but also neighboring networks to the serving PoA.
The framework also specifies a handover profile message,
namely MIH_HO_Profile, to provide each user's handover
policies to serving PoA. This message enables the serving PoA
to access each user's handover policies in the initiation phase
and to decide target network without further request messages
for handover information to MN in the discovery phase.
Therefore, the entrusting request message, referred as
MIH_MN_HO_Entrust_Request, is defined in the network
discovery phase, while the response message, called
MIH_MN_HO_Entrust_Response, is used in the network
selection phase. These messages reduce the size of the legacy
messages, according as they does not contain the information
of candidate networks which MIH_H_Profile has previously
provided to serving PoSe
The proposed handover framework is illustrated in Figure 4
and 5. Figure 4 shows the mobile-initiated MIH message flows
and Figure 5 shows the network-initiated MIH message flows
for handover. The detailed explain is as follows.
Mobile-initiated Handover
1. During initiation, MN sends the handover profile message
to Serving PoA and then Serving PoA gets neighboring
network information from IS. It is important that the
initiation phase is executed once right after MN is first
attached to serving network.
2. In network discovery phase, MN orders serving PoA to
check the availability of the resource at candidate networks
by sending MIH_MN_HO_Entrust_Request. This newly
defined message is analogous to
MIH_MN_HO_Candidate_Query_Request except that it
does not contain the information of candidate networks
which MN has previously provided using MIH_HO_
Profile during initiation. Accordingly, we expect that the
size of the newly defined message is much smaller than
MIH_MN_H0_Candidate_Query_Request.
3. Serving PoS queries the availability of resources at the
neighboring candidate networks by employing
MIH_N2N_HO_Query_Resources_Request and MIH_
N2N_HO_Query_Resources_Response. Note that Serving
PoS does not notify the MN of the resulting resource
availability at the candidate networks. This is because MN
entrusts Serving PoS with the target decision by giving the
handover profile so that MN has no reason to get those
information.
4. As explained above, Serving PoS decides the target of the
handover based on the available resource status at candidate
MIH N2N HO Can
didate_Query_Reso
urces_Request
MIH_Nat_HO_Cand
idata_Query_Requa
st
MIH_NeCHO_Cand
idate_Query_Respo
nse
IMNl

MIH Selection ---t---------1--------I..

MIH_Net_HO_Com
mit_Request
MIH Net HO Com

MIH Discovery ----1 1------......
MIH_N2N_HO_CO
mmit_Request
MIH_N2N_HO..Co
mmit_Response
MIH N2N HO Can

urcas_Request
MIH_N2N_HO_Can
didate_Query_Raso
urces_Response
MIH_MN_HO_Cand
idale_Query_Respo
nse
MIH._MN_HO_Cand
idale_Query_Reque
st
1--------MIH_Get_lnformatioo_Request ...
I I
.....------MIH_GeClnformation_Response ------f
IMNI

MIH Discovery ----11--------+------1...

MIH Completion --+---------+------1... HO
MIH_MN_HO_Complete__Request

MIH_N2N_HO_Co
mplete_Request
MIH N2N HO Co
mplete_Response
MIH_MN_HO_Complete_Response
MIH Completion --I---------1-------L.
MIH_N2N_HO_CO
mplete_Request
MIH_N2N_HO_Co
mplete_Response
Figure 2. Mobile Initiated MID Message Flow
Figure 3. Network Initiated MID Message Flow
ISBN 978-89-5519-139-4 -244- Feb. 15-18, 20091CACT 2009
MIH_N2N_HO_CO
mplete_Request
MIH_N2N_HO_Co
mplete_Response
MIH Completion
"-lot-Ifltl' Mar,agemen! Protocols HO
MIH Net HO Com
mlt_Respo;;-se
MIH_Net_HO_Com
miCRequest
Network Discovery -+---------II------i....
Initiation ----+-------1------......
r--MNl

MIH_N2N_HO_Can
didate_Query_Reso
urces_Request
MIH N2N HO Can
didate_ _,'Reso
urces_Response
Network Discovery --+----------11------....
MIH_MN_HO_Entr
uscRequest
MIH_MN_HO_Entru
st_Response
Initiation ......
MIH_HO_Profile
MIH Completion
MIH_MN_HO_Complete_Request

MIH N2N HO Co
mplete_Requ.est
MIH_N2N_HO_Co
mplete_Response
MIH_MN_HO_Complete_Response
r--MNl

Figure 4. Proposing Mobile Initiated Mm Message Flow Figure 5. Proposing Network Initiated MIH Message Flow
networks.
5. Serving PoS sends MIH_N2N_HO_Commit_Request to
Target PoS to prepare resource at the target network. Target
PoS responds the result of the resource preparation by
sending MIH_N2N_HO_Commit_ Response.
6. After identifying that resource is successfully prepared,
Serving PoS notifies MN to commit handover toward the
specified network type and PoA through MIH_MN_
HO_Entrust_Response message.
7. New link layer connection is established and a certain
mobility management protocol procedures are carried out
between MN and target network.
8. MN may send MIH_MN_HO_Complete_Request to Target
PoSe Target PoS sends MIH_N2N_HO_Complete_Request
to previous Serving PoS to release resource which was
allocated to MN. After identifying that resource is
successfully released, Target PoS may send
MIH_MN_HO_Complete_Response to MN.
Network-initiated Handover
I. During initiation, MN sends the handover profile message
to Serving PoA and then Serving PoA gets neighboring
network infonnation from IS. It is important that the
initiation phase is executed once right after MN is first
attached to serving network.
2. In network discovery phase, there is no need for Serving
PoS to query handover information to MN since the
handover profile is already given. Serving PoS just sends
MIH_N2N_HO_Query_Resources_Request to one or more
candidate PoSs to check the availability of the resource at
candidate networks. Candidate PoS responds by sending
MIH_N2N_HO_Query_Resources_ Response to Serving
PoSe
3. Serving PoS decides the target network and requests
resource preparation to Target PoS by using MIH_N2N_
HO_Commit_Request and MIH_N2N_HO_Commit_
Response.
4. After identifying that resource is successfully prepared,
Serving PoS commands MN to commit handover toward
the specified network type and PoA through
MIH_Net_HO_Commit_Request and MIH_Net_HO_
Commit_Response messages.
5. New link layer connection is established and a certain
mobility management protocol procedures are carried out
between MN and target network.
6. Target PoS sends MIH_N2N_HO_Complete_Request to
previous Serving PoS to release resource which was
allocated to MN. After identifying that resource is
successfully released, previous Serving PoS may send
MIH_N2N_HO_Complete_Response to Target PoSe
4. Performance Evaluation
In this section, we evaluate the perfonnance of the MIH
framework compared with legacy one in tenns of handover
ISBN 978-89-5519-139-4 -245- Feb. 15-18, 20091CACT 2009
latency. So we derive total handover latency including the
delay of initiation, network discovery, network selection,
mobility management, and so on. Equation (1) and (2)
describe the total handover latency of legacy mobile-initiated
MIH framework ( _mob_MIH ) and which of proposed MIH
framework ), respectively.
message, according as the entrusting message does not contain
the information of candidate networks which MN has
previously provided using MIH_HO_Profile. As the future
work, we will analysis various SAPs and adapt those to FGN
environment.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Regard that Dx _y is the message delivery delay between X
and Y, P
Net
deceision is the process time of target network
decision, T
L2
is the handover latency caused by link
connection establishment, and T
L3
is the handover latency
caused by IP connection establishment. In same manner, the
total handover latency of both legacy and proposed
network-initiated MIH framework are represented at equation
(3) and (4), respectively.
=4DMN- SAR +6DsAR-TAR
+ 2D
MN
- TAR +2D
MN
-
1S
+PNet_deceision +T
L2
+T
L3
Tnew_mob_MIH =3DMN- SAR +6DsAR-TAR
+ 2DMN- TAR +2DsAR-IS +PNet_deceision +T L2 +T L3
net MIH =4DMN- SAR +6DSAR-TAR
+ 2DSAR-IS +PNet_deceision +T L2 +T L3
T"ew_net_MIH =3DMN- SAR +6DSAR-TAR
+ 2DSAR-IS +PNet_deceision +T L2 +T L3
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
This research was supported by the Internet information Retrieval
Research Center (IRC) in Korea Aerospace University. IRC is a
Regional Research Center ofGyeonggi Province, designated by ITEP
and Ministry of Knowledge Economy.
REFERENCES
[1] C. Yiping, Y. Yuhang, "A New 4G Architecture Providing Multimode
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[2] S. Y. Kim, Y. B. Cho, and S. 1. Cho, "Platform Architecture for Seamless
MMS Service over WLAN and CDMA2000 Networks," PCM2004, pp.
720-727, December, 2004.
[3] IEEE Std. 802.21, Draft D9.0, "IEEE Standard for Local and
Metropolitan Area Networks: Media Independent Handover Services. "
[4] L. Eastwood, S. Migaldi, X. Qiaobing, V. Gupta, "Mobility Using IEEE
802.21 in a Heterogeneous IEEE 802.16/802.1 I-Based
IMT-ADVANCED (4G) Network," IEEE Wireless Communications,
April, 2008.
[5] Q.B. Mussabbir, W. Yao, Z. Niu, X. Fu, "Optimized FMIPv6 Using
IEEE802.21 MIH Services in Vehicular Networks," IEEE Transactions
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[6] 1. Stein, "Survey of IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover
Services," http://userfs.cec.wustl.edu/-jws2/mihs /index.html.
[7] K. N. Choong, V. S. Kesavan, S. L. Ng, F. de Carvalho, A. L. Y. Low and
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[8] https://mentor.ieee.org/802.21/documents.
From these equations, we verify that the proposed MIH
framework reduces handover latency. Especially, the
handover latency over wireless section, i.e. DMN-SAR ' are
decreased by eliminating the wireless signaling overheads in
the proposed MIH framework.
5. Conclusions
This paper has introduced the IEEE 802.21 MIH and
evaluated the handover framework using MIH messages in
heterogeneous wireless access networks. In addition, we have
specified novel messages, the handover profile message and
the entrusting message, to improve the handover framework.
In result, it is verified that the handover profile message,
namely MIH_HO_Profile, provides each user's handover
policies to the serving PoA, it thus allows the serving PoA to
access each user's handover policies and to decide target
network without any requests for handover information to MN.
It is further confirmed that the use of the entrusting message,
called MIH_MN_HO_Entrust, reduces the size of the legacy
ISBN 978-89-5519-139-4 -246- Feb. 15-18, 20091CACT 2009