Telecommun Syst (2009) 42: 5–15

DOI 10.1007/s11235-009-9164-y

SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session

Initiation Protocol and Host Identity Protocol
Shuigen Yang · Huachun Zhou · Yajuan Qin ·
Hongke Zhang

Published online: 12 June 2009

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract In the all-IP wireless networks, mobility manage-
ment is a crucial issue, and it can be operated at different lay-
ers in the traditional Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
Protocol (TCP/IP) stack. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
is an application layer protocol used for the signaling and
the mobility management without any modifications of the
lower layer protocols, especially in the voice over IP envi-
ronment. However, since it always gets the lowest priority
in the networking model, it will produce the large handoff
latency, the packet loss, and the handoff blocking probabil-
ity. To provide an efficient mobility management, SIP can
be combined with other protocols. In this paper, we pro-
pose a cross-layer mobility management scheme based on
SIP and the Host Identity Protocol (HIP) which is a new
protocol designed to provide secure and continuous com-
munications between two nodes by separating the identifier
and the locator roles of the traditional IP address. In the pro-
posed scheme, the mobile node and the correspondent node
use their host identity tags to establish the session connec-
tions, and the mobile nodes uses the HIP location update
scheme instead of the SIP location update scheme to update
its IP address when it moves to a new subnet. We discuss
the proposed scheme’s architecture and the major mobility
procedures, including the session setup, the handoff and the
location update in this paper. We also develop an analyti-
cal model to study the handoff performance of the proposed
scheme, the typical SIP, and the hybrid SIP/Mobile IP, re-
spectively. The analytical results demonstrate that the pro-
posed scheme outperforms the typical SIP and the hybrid
S. Yang () · H. Zhou · Y. Qin · H. Zhang
National Engineering Lab on Next Generation Internet
Interconnection Devices, School of Electronics and Information
Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, 100044 Beijing, China
e-mail: yangsg1981@gmail.com
SIP/Mobile IP in terms of the handoff latency, the packet
loss, and the handoff blocking probability.
Keywords Mobility management · Session initiation
protocol · Host identity protocol · Cross-layer design
1 Introduction
The fast increasing demand for wireless access to Internet
applications is fueled by the remarkable access of wireless
technologies and the explosive growth of Internet. However,
since the Internet was originally designed for communica-
tions between the fixed nodes, it does not support mobility
well. There is a strong need for some extensions to be de-
veloped to support mobility. These extensions are referred
to as mobility management mechanisms. Mobility manage-
ment consists of two fundamental operations: location man-
agement and handoff management. Location management
refers to the task of locating a mobile node by a correspon-
dent node in order to initiate and establish a connection.
Handoff management is the process by which a mobile node
keeps its connection active when it moves from one access
point to another.
Mobility management can be handled at different layers
in the traditional Transport Control Protocol/Internet Proto-
col (TCP/IP) stack. For example, Session Initiation Proto-
col (SIP) [1] is an application layer solution, and Mobile IP
(MIP) [2, 3] is a network layer solution. SIP was initially
developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
as an application layer multimedia signaling protocol. It can
be used to support mobility through its ability to define a
number of specific entities and messages. However, since
6 S. Yang et al.
the application layer protocol always gets the lowest prior-
ity in the networking model, SIP will produce a long de-
lay in the handoff. MIP provides a network layer mobility
and transparency to the higher layers. However, there are a
number of problems associated with M, such as the signal-
ing traffic overhead, the high packet loss rate, and the hand-
off latency, thereby causing the user-perceptible deteriora-
tions of real-time traffic [4]. Although many enhanced tech-
niques can improve its performance, MIP still has the weak-
ness in terms of the efficiency and the complexity. The IETF
also has proposed several other mobility management proto-
cols, like the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP)
[5] and the Network-based Localized Mobility Management
(NetLMM) [6]. However, these protocols suffer from disad-
vantages, e.g., SCTP lacks “All-IP networks” support and
NetLMM is in the nascent stages of development.
The fundamental problem of IP mobility is the semantic
overloading of IP address. In the traditional TCP/IP stack,
an IP address represents not only the topological location
but also the identifier for a network interface [7]. Further-
more, connections in the current Internet are identified by
the quadruple <source IP address, destination IP address,
source port, destination port>. When a host changes its old
IP address to a new one, all connections bound to the host
would fail since they are identified by the old, and the host
has to re-establish the connections.
The traditional TCP/IP stack is already heavily loaded
down with functionalities that have been added over the
years. Optimization and adding new functionalities to sup-
port mobility are very difficult. Currently, a new idea has
emerged for mobility by introducing a new layer. Host Iden-
tity Protocol (HIP) [8] is one of these new TCP/IP stacks,
and it is designed by the IETF to provide secure and con-
tinuous communications between two nodes. HIP separates
the identifier and the locator roles of the traditional IP ad-
dress by introducing a new host identity namespace, and a
new layer between the network layer and the transport layer.
In HIP, the transport layer connections are no longer bound
to the IP addresses but to the host identities, and the IP ad-
dresses become pure routing tags. Therefore, the change of
an IP address is transparent to the transport layer connec-
tions, and they do not have to be broken. Hence, HIP sup-
ports host mobility well in nature.
In this paper, we propose a cross-layer mobility manage-
ment scheme based on the SIP and HIP inter-working mod-
els (SHIP) to support seamless and fast handoff for the mo-
bile node. In SHIP, the mobile node and the correspondent
node use their host identity tags to establish the session con-
nections, and the mobile nodes uses the HIP location update
scheme instead of the SIP location update scheme to update
its IP address. Therefore, SHIP is a one-suite protocol that
performs seamless mobility, fast handoff, and security. We
also develop an analytical model to study the handoff per-
formance of SHIP, the typical SIP, and the hybrid SIP/MIP,
respectively.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2
gives a short overview of SIP and HIP, and some related
work. Section 3 describes the proposed cross-layer mobility
management scheme in detail. Section 4 develops an analyt-
ical model of handoff performance for SHIP, SIP, and hybrid
SIP/MIP, respectively. Section 5 gives the numerical perfor-
mance evaluation results. Finally, Sect. 6 concludes this pa-
per.
2 Background
In this section, we firstly provide a short overview of SIP and
HIP, which are the essential building blocks for SHIP mo-
bility management architecture. We then give an overview
of some related work.
2.1 Session Initiation Protocol
SIP is an application layer protocol used to locate the users
and negotiate the parameters needed to establish the multi-
media sessions. The user is identified by the SIP Uniform
Resource Identifier (URI), whose format is similar to the
email address format (i.e. user @ domain). The SIP user
agent registers itself with the SIP URI in the SIP registrar
server by REGISTER message, and establishes the session
with other user agent using INVITE message that contains
session description in Session Description Protocol (SDP)
format. The detailed description of SIP can be found in [1].
SIP has the potential capabilities for Internet mobility.
When a mobile node moves to a new subnet and obtains a
new IP address while the session is ongoing, it will send a
re-INVITE message with updated session description to the
correspondent node. This re-INVITE message maintains the
same Call-ID of the existing session but replacing the con-
tact field of SIP header with the new IP address to inform
the correspondent node where it wants to receive the future
messages. This re-INVITE message also replaces the c field
of SDP header with the new IP address to redirect the pack-
ets to its new location. This procedure succeeds with 200
OK and ACK exchanged between the mobile node and the
correspondent node. The mobile node also needs to send a
REGISTER message to the home SIP server to update the
location information stored there, so that the new call can
be correctly redirected. Figure 1 illustrates the SIP mobility
and its operations.
SIP supports session mobility without any modifications
of lower layer protocols. The IETF has adopted SIP as the
session management for the Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) streams. However, since the application layer proto-
col always gets the lowest priority in the networking model,
SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session Initiation Protocol and Host Identity
SIP will produce a long delay in the handoff. In addition,
SIP does not support mobility in other connections that are
not created under SIP currently. To break these limits, the
hybrid SIP and MIP schemes are discussed to provide a full
mobility management for all applications. Some of these hy-
brid schemes can be found in Sect. 2.3.
2.2 Host Identity Protocol
HIP separates the endpoint identifier and the locator roles of
the traditional IP address by introducing a new cryptography-
based host identity namespace, and a new host identity layer
between the network layer and the transport layer. Each host
has a globally unique host identity, which is the public key
of a public-private key pair. The host identity is often repre-
sented by its 128-bit long hash, the Host Identity Tag (HIT).
In HIP, the transport layer connections are no longer bound
to the IP addresses but to the HITs, and the IP addresses
become pure routing tags.
In HIP, the nodes need to establish the HIP layer end-to-
end connections using HIP Base Exchange [9]. During the
HIP Base Exchange, a Diffie-Hellman procedure is used to
create a session key and to establish a pair of IP Security
(IPSec) Encapsulated Security Payload (ESP) security as-
sociations between two nodes [10]. Figure 2 illustrates the
message sequences of the HIP Base Exchange.
The Initiator begins the HIP Base Exchange by sending
an I1 packet that contains both the HITs of the communica-
tion nodes. On receipt of the I1 packet, the Responder sends
Fig. 1 SIP mobility and its operations
Fig. 2 HIP base exchange messages
7
back a R1 packet that contains a puzzle to be solved by the
Initiator. The idea of employing a puzzle is that the Initiator
is forced to perform a moderately expensive computation
before the Responder commits its computational resources
to this connection. The R1 packet also contains the public
key of the Responder together with Diffie-Hellman parame-
ters. On receipt of the R1 packet, the Initiator solves the puz-
zle and sends the responder cookie in an I2 packet together
with an IPSec Security Parameters Index (SPI) value and
its encrypted public key to the Responder. The Responder
verifies the solution and creates the IPSec ESP security as-
sociations. The final R2 message contains the SPI value of
the Responder. After completing a HIP Base Exchange, the
Initiator and Responder exchange the user traffic protected
with IPSec.
HIP supports host mobility in nature. When the mobile
node moves to a new subnet and gets a new IP address, it
performs the HIP UPDATE mechanism [11] with the corre-
spondent node. This update informs the correspondent node
that it has moved to a new IP address. The transport layer
connection that is running on does not have to be broken
because the HITs used to identify the transport layer con-
nection do not change. If the mobile node and the corre-
spondent node change their IP addresses at roughly the same
time, the HIP UPDATE messages would not be able to reach
the mobile node and the correspondent node. This double
jump problem can be solved by having the mobile node and
the correspondent node update their IP addresses at the Do-
main Name System (DNS) [12] or at the Rendezvous Server
(RVS) [13].
2.3 Related work
In [14], the authors analyzed how SIP could be used to
provide an initial mapping between an HIT and an IP ad-
dress for a particular session. The authors investigated that
both HIP and SIP could provide complementary function-
ality to provide a better service behavior. However, in their
proposal, SIP and HIP worked independently to provide ser-
vices. The authors did not discuss how to use the integrated
SIP and HIP scheme for mobility management. Efficient
combination of HIP and SIP is still an open issue and needs
more researches.
Most of the previous work focused on the combination
of MIP and SIP. In [15], the authors used SIP for real time
and MIP for non-real time services. The authors also made
a simulation study of handoff performance based on packet
loss ratio for SIP and MIP. In [16], the authors proposed
a combined MIP and SIP mobility management approach
to provide fast handoff, and presented simulations based on
NS-2 to show performance improvement. In [17], the au-
thors integrated the MIP and SIP network entities to avoid
redundant signaling. In [18], the authors integrated SIP and
8 S. Yang et al.
MIP for macro-mobility. In [19], the authors presented a
multilayer mobility management scheme based on MIP and
SIP for all-IP networks where micro-mobility was handled
separately from macro-mobility. In [20], the authors ana-
lyzed the issues related to the adoption of SIP services in
the 3G networks, in particular the implications of adopting
SIP in the presence of MIP and the interactions between the
two protocols within the scope of the IP Multimedia Sub-
system (IMS), focusing on IPv6. In [21], the authors pre-
sented two approaches based on the hybrid MIP-SIP archi-
tecture. The first approach culminated in a tightly integrated
architecture, which merged the redundant mobility entities
in MIP and SIP to yield maximum system efficiency. The
other approach leaded to a loosely integrated architecture,
where their physical entities were kept intact.
All the above mentioned literature did not consider the
hybrid usage of MIP or SIP based on the handoff latency,
packet loss, and handoff-blocking probability. Furthermore,
all approaches did not consider the handoff performance due
to the wireless link frame error rate, which plays an impor-
tant role in the handoff performance.
3 Cross-layer design
In this section, we propose the cross-layer mobility manage-
ment scheme called SHIP. We discuss the architecture and
the major mobility procedures in detail, including the ses-
sion setup, the handoff and the location update.
3.1 Architecture
In the SHIP architecture, the functions of the SIP and HIP
entities are decomposed and the resulting functions of sim-
ilar functionality are integrated to minimize the redundan-
cies. Architecturally, the SIP registrar server and the HIP
RVS are integrated into a uniform entity, which is referred
to as the SHIP Home Mobility Server (HMS). The SHIP
HMS records the HITs and the IP addresses of the nodes
registered at it.
A node is identified with an HIT as the globally unique
host identifier, and it registers its HIT and IP address at the
HMS. A user is identified with an SIP URI as the globally
reachable user identifier, and it registers its URI at the HMS.
As a result, the record in an address binding list (database)
managed in the HMS may look like (HIT, URI, IP address).
The mapping of the IP address, the HIT and the URI can
be established when the node initially registers at the HMS
using an extended HIP Registration Protocol [22] with its
URI enclosed, or simply by using both the HIP and the SIP
registration messages for this kick-off registration. When re-
quested, the HMS will return both the HIT and the IP ad-
dress. In addition, the DNS records the relationship between
the node’s domain name and its corresponding HMS’s IP
address.
In order to establish the sessions between two nodes, it is
necessary to have a session description format that supports
the encoding of an IP address and an HIT. An extension to
encode the HITs in the SDP is proposed in [14], which en-
hanced the SDP ‘k’ and ‘a’ parameters to support the encod-
ing of an HIT. The ‘k’ parameter has the following structure:
k=host-identity: <HIP HIT>. The ‘a’ parameter has the fol-
lowing structure: a=key-mgmt: host identity <HIP HIT>.
When the Initiator wants to communicate with the Re-
sponder, it firstly obtains the Responder’s HIT and the IP
address. Then the Initiator and the Responder perform the
HIP Base Exchange to establish the HIP layer connection.
Once the HIP layer connection is established, the Initiator
and the Responder handles session establishment using the
offer/answer model, which consists of a three-way negoti-
ation of session parameters. In the SHIP environment, the
HIT replaces the IP address in the SIP header and the SDP
packet. Figure 3 illustrates the communication process of
SHIP.
1) Rosa sends a resolution request containing the details
of the Smith’s domain name to the DNS to obtain the
Smith’s IP address. On receipt of this resolution request,
the DNS answers with the corresponding HMS’s IP ad-
dress. These steps are illustrated by F1 and F2 in Fig. 3.
2) After obtaining the HMS’s IP address, Rosa sends a res-
olution request containing the details of Smith’s URI to
the HMS to obtain Smith’s HIT and the IP address. On
receipt of this resolution request, the HMS answers with
the HIT and the IP address of Smith. These steps are il-
lustrated by F3 and F4 in Fig. 3.
3) After obtaining the HIT and the IP address of Smith,
Rosa sends an I1 packet of the HIP Base Exchange to
Smith. Rosa and Smith start the HIP Base Exchange
procedures to establish the HIP layer connection. These
steps are illustrated by F5, F6, F7 and F8 in Fig. 3.
4) Rosa sends an SIP request “INVITE” to Smith to indicate
that it wants to communicate with Smith. This request
contains the details of Rosa’s HIT (HIT-R) and IP address
(IP-R), Smith’s HIT (HIT-S) and IP address (IP-S), ports
to be used and other parameters. The SDP is used in the
payload for this purpose. This step is illustrated by F9 in
Fig. 3.
5) Smith reads the request sent from Rosa, and tells Rosa
that it has received the “INVITE” message by sending
a “100 Trying” message to Rosa. This step is illustrated
by F10 in Fig. 3.
6) While the phone rings, Smith sends provisional messages
(180 Ringing) to Rosa just so it does not time out and give
up. This step is illustrated by F11 in Fig. 3.
7) Eventually, Smith decides to accept the call. At this
point, Smith sends a “200 OK” response to Rosa. In the
SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session Initiation Protocol and Host Identity
Fig. 3 SHIP communication
process
payload of this response, there is another SDP message,
which contains a set of session parameters. All types of
SIP requests are accepted using “200 OK” responses.
This step is illustrated by F12 in Fig. 3.
8) On receipt of the “200 OK” response, Rosa confirms
with an ACK message. There are no retries and no re-
sponse messages for this request type “INVITE”, even if
the message is lost. The ACK message is only used in
the case of an INVITE message. This step is illustrated
by F13 in Fig. 3.
After these steps shown above, Rosa and Smith establish
a session between them, which is protected by IPSec pro-
tocol. This session traffic is created with the HITs in SHIP,
and the header of the transport layer protocol uses the HITs
instead of the IP addresses.
3.2 Mobility management
For a successful handoff, the Mobile Node (MN) performs a
location update with the HMS and the Correspondent Node
(CN) to indicate its new IP address when it moves to a new
subnet. Figure 4 illustrates the SHIP mobility and its opera-
tions.
When an MN moves to a new subnet, it obtains a new IP
address from the Access Router (AR) in the new subnet. The
MN then updates its IP address at the CN using the HIP loca-
tion update mechanism [11]. During this procedure, the MN
generates a location update packet with a Readdress (REA)
9
parameter containing the MN’s current IP address, signs the
packet with the private key matching to the used host iden-
tity, and sends the packet to the CN. This location update
packet with the REA parameter is called as REA packet. The
REA packet also contains an ESP_INFO parameter contain-
ing the value of the old SPI and the new SPI for the secu-
rity consideration. The old SPI is set to the previous SPI,
and the new SPI is set to the desired new SPI value for the
incoming security association. Optionally, the MN may in-
clude a Diffie-Hellman parameter for a new Diffie-Hellman
key. The MN waits for this REA packet to be acknowledged,
and retransmits if necessary.
On receipt of the REA packet sent from the MN, the CN
starts an IP address verification process for the new IP ad-
dress that is included in the REA packet. The IP address
verification is needed to avoid accepting false updates. The
CN also updates any local bindings between the HIP asso-
ciation and the MN’s IP address. The CN then sends a loca-
tion update packet with an Address Check (AC) parameter
to the IP address that was in the REA packet. This location
update packet with the address check parameter is called as
AC packet. The AC packet also includes an ESP_INFO pa-
rameter with the old SPI and the new SPI parameters which
are set to the value of the pre-existing incoming SPI.
On receipt of the AC packet that matches to the REA
packet sent earlier, the MN responds with a location update
packet with an Address Check Reply (ACR) parameter. This
location update packet with the address check reply parame-
10
Fig. 4 SHIP mobility and its
operations
ter is called as ACR packet. When the CN receives the ACR
packet, it uses the new IP address as the location information
of the MN and removes the old IP address.
Since the header of the transport layer protocol uses the
HITs instead of the IP address, the MN does not have to send
the re-INVITE message to the CN. Therefore, SHIP shows
no difference for the transport layer protocol even though
the IP address is changed.
In order to be established a session by a new CN, the
MN should update its location at the HMS, though it does
not factor into the handoff delay. The location update proce-
dures at the HMS are almost the same as the location update
procedures at the CN without including the ESP_INFO pa-
rameter. The MN generates a REA packet that contains the
current IP address of the MN, and sends the packet to the
HMS. When the HMS receives the REA packet, it updates
the address binding list between the MN’s HIT and the IP
address, and then sends an AC packet to the MN. On receipt
of the AC packet sent from the HMS, the MN responds with
an ACR packet.
4 Analytical models for handoff performance
In this section, we develop an analytical model to inves-
tigate the handoff performance for SHIP, the typical SIP,
and the hybrid SIP/MIP, respectively. In all-IP wireless net-
works, the handoff performance can be specified in terms of
the handoff latency, the packet loss, and the handoff block-
ing probability. Analyses of these metrics are very useful in
evaluating the performance of mobility management proto-
cols. For simplicity, we call the hybrid SIP/MIP as MSIP.
4.1 Handoff latency
The path between the MN and the CN contains two parts:
the wireless link connecting the MN and the access router,
S. Yang et al.
and the wired link between the access router and the CN. We
define the following parameters at first.
D One-way wireless link delay between the MN and
the access router.
tac One-way wired link delay between the access router
and the CN.
tmc One-way packet transportation delay between the
MN and the CN.
The entire handoff latency Th includes the time required
for the MN’s link layer handoff to the new subnet tl2 , the
time required for the new IP address acquisition by the MN
in the new subnet ta , and the time required for the location
update to the CN tup . Therefore,
Th = tl2 + ta + tup . (1)
According to the SIP mobility and its operations shown
in Fig. 1, the location update to the CN includes the re-
INVITE, the OK, and the ACK procedures. According to
the SHIP mobility and its operations shown in Fig. 4, the lo-
cation update to the CN includes the Readdress (REA), the
Address Check (AC), and the Address Check Reply (ACR)
procedures. Therefore, the location update to the CN in both
SHIP and SIP includes three procedures. On the other hand,
in the hybrid SIP/MIP (MSIP), since the MN and the CN
need to use the home agent to re-direct the data packets, the
MN has to update its IP address at the CN and the home
agent [16, 21]. Each location update includes two proce-
dures, binding update request and acknowledgement. As-
sume that the one-way wired link delay between the access
router and the home agent is equal to the one-way wired link
delay between the access router and the CN. Therefore,

3tmc , for SHIP and SIP,
tup = (2)
4tmc , for MSIP.
Let pf denote the wireless link layer frame error rate, τ
denote the wireless link layer inter-frame interval, and pij
SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session Initiation Protocol and Host Identity
denote the probability that the first frame transmitted by the
MN is received correctly by the access router, being the ith
retransmitted frame at the j th retransmission trial. The ex-
pression for pij and the one-way frame transportation delay
tf between the MN and the access router with radio link
protocol are given by [23]
i 2 −i
pij = pf (1 − pf )2 [(2 − pf )pf ]( 2 +j −1) , (3)

n 
i such as the handoff latency, the signal-to-noise deterioration,
tf = D(1 − pf ) + pij [2i · D + 2(j − 1)τ ],
i=1 j =1
where i = 1, 2, . . . , n, j = 1, 2, . . . , i, and n is the maximum
number of trials that the radio link protocol carries out be-
fore aborting the attempt to transmit a frame over the link
layer. Typical, n = 3.
Let Lp and Lf denote the length of a packet (typically
an IP packet) and the length of a wireless link layer frame,
respectively. Therefore, the number of frames per packet
L border crossing rate for the MN out of a subnet. For the sake
is K =  Lfp . The one-way packet transportation delay be-
tween the MN and the CN tmc is
tmc = tf + (K − 1)τ + tac .
By summing up (1) and (2), we would get the handoff
latency as follows.
 =
t + t + 3tmc , for SHIP and SIP,
Th = l2 a (6)
tl2 + ta + 4tmc , for MSIP,
where tmc is given by (5).
4.2 Packet loss
Without efficient buffer management, the packets transmit-
ted by the CN during the handoff latency will be lost. There-
fore, if the packet transmission rate of the CN is λ, the num-
ber of packets that will be lost during the handoff (PL ) is
given by

λ(tl2 + ta + 3tmc ), for SHIP and SIP,
PL = λ · Th (7)
λ(tl2 + ta + 4tmc ), for MSIP.
According to (7), we can see that the packet loss during
a handoff is proportional to the handoff latency.
4.3 Handoff blocking probability
Handoff blocking probability represents the probability that
a handoff request is blocked due to the lack of available
channels. It was computed as the ratio of the total number
of blocked handoffs to the total number of handoff requests
during a simulation period. And it is often used to express
11
the likelihood that a session/call connection will be prema-
turely terminated due to unsuccessful handoff during a ses-
sion lifetime. The handoff blocking probability is consid-
ered to be more important than the blocking probability of
new calls because the call is already active and the quality
of service is more sensitive for the handoff calls. Hence, the
minimization of the handoff blocking probability is crucial
for mobility management schemes.
The handoff blocking can be caused by many factors,
(4) the unavailable channel, and the session rejection by the net-
work. However, we only consider the handoff latency as the
handoff blocking factor in this paper. In this scenario, if the
subnet residence time is less than the total handoff time, the
service is forcefully terminated due to the loss of the link or
the channel.
Let Th denote the total handoff latency, and its mean
value is E[Th ]. Let tc denote the subnet residence time, and
its probability density function is fc (t). Let μc denote the
of simplicity and to easily derive the analytical expression,
we assume that Th is exponentially distributed with the cu-
mulative function FT (t). Then, the handoff blocking proba-
(5)
bility (PB ) is given by
PB = Pr (Th > Tc )
 ∞
[1 − FT (u)]fc (u)du
0
μc E[Th ]
= . (8)
1 + μc E[Th ]
According to [24], if we assume that the access router’s
coverage area is circular, the border crossing rate for the MN
out of a subnet is given by
2ν
μc = (9)
πR
where ν is the average velocity of the MN, and R is the
radius of the subnet.
5 Performance evaluation results
In this section, we give the performance evaluation results
of the handoff performance for SHIP, SIP, and MSIP, re-
spectively. For the numerical calculations, we use the fol-
lowing parameter values used in the previous work [23–25]:
tac = 50 ms, tl2 = 10 ms, ta = 20 ms, n = 3, τ = 20 ms, and
Lf = 19 bytes. The wireless link delay between the MN and
the access router is D = 10 ms and 150 ms for the WLAN
and the satellite network, respectively [26]. The lengths of
the SIP re-INVITE message, the SHIP UPDATE message,
12
Fig. 5 Handoff latency versus wireless link layer frame error rate
and the MSIP binding update message are 140 bytes [25],
80 bytes [9, 11], and 56 bytes [16, 21], respectively.
Let the wireless link layer frame error rate varies from 0
to 0.5 with a step value of 0.05. Figure 5 shows the handoff
latency against the wireless link layer frame error rate.
We can get two conclusions from Fig. 5:
1) The handoff latencies of SHIP, SIP, and MSIP increase as
the wireless link layer frame error rate increases. This can
be explained as follows. A higher value of the wireless
link layer frame error rate increases the probability of the
erroneous packet transfer across the wireless link. Since
the handoff signaling messages have to be retransmitted
by the MN several times before the access router receives
them, it increases the wireless link layer packet transfer
delay and then results in higher handoff latency. More-
over, the handoff latency increases faster as the wireless
link layer frame error rate increases when the wireless
link layer access delay is larger.
2) The handoff latency of SHIP is lower than that of SIP and
MSIP. This can be explained as follows. The transmis-
sion delay across the wireless link depends on the num-
ber of the wireless link layer frames. The larger size of
the packet means the higher probability that it gets erro-
neous packet during its transfer across the wireless link
layer. This increases the wireless link layer packet trans-
fer delay and then results in higher handoff latency. As
the size of an SIP handoff signaling message is larger
than that of an SHIP handoff signaling message, the SIP
handoff signaling message requires a higher number of
the retransmissions, and then the higher handoff latency.
On the other hand, although the size of an MSIP handoff
signaling message is smaller than that of an SHIP handoff
signaling message, the MN has to update its IP address at
both the CN and the home agent. Therefore, the handoff
latency of MSIP will be higher than that of SHIP.
S. Yang et al.
Fig. 6 Packet loss versus wireless link layer frame error rate
Assume the packets transmission rate of the CN is λ = 10
packets/sec [24]. Let the wireless link layer frame error rate
varies from 0 to 0.5 with a step value of 0.05. Figure 6 shows
the packet loss against the wireless link layer frame error
rate. The packet loss increases as the wireless link layer
frame error rate increases, and the packet loss of SHIP is
lower than that of SIP and MSIP. In fact, the packet loss
during a handoff is proportional to the handoff latency in the
proposed analytical model. Therefore, the packet loss has a
similar nature to the handoff latency.
Let the average velocity of the MN is ν = 20 m/s, the ra-
dius of the subnet is R = 500 m, and the wireless link layer
frame error rate varies from 0 to 0.5 with a step value of 0.05.
Figure 7 shows the handoff blocking probability against the
wireless link layer frame error rate. The handoff blocking
probability increases as the wireless link layer frame error
rate increases, and the handoff blocking probability of SHIP
is lower than that of SIP and MSIP. The proposed analyti-
cal model only considers the handoff latency as the handoff
blocking probability factor in the performance evaluation.
Therefore, if we fixed the average velocity of the MN and
the radius of the subnet, the handoff blocking probability
has a similar nature to the handoff latency.
Let the wireless link layer frame error rate is pf = 0.2,
the radius of the subnet is R = 500 m, and the average ve-
locity of the MN varies from 0 to 40 m/s with a step value
of 5 m/s. Figure 8 shows the handoff blocking probability
against the average velocity of the MN. The handoff block-
ing probability increases as the average velocity of the MN
increases. A higher value of the average velocity of the MN
increases the border crossing rate for the MN out of a sub-
net. Therefore, the MN has to update its IP address more
frequently. This results in the higher handoff latency and the
handoff blocking probability. Moreover, the handoff block-
ing probability increases faster as the average velocity of
SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session Initiation Protocol and Host Identity
Fig. 7 Handoff blocking probability versus wireless link layer frame
error rate
Fig. 8 Handoff blocking probability versus average velocity of the
mobile node
the MN increases when the wireless link layer access delay
is larger. In addition, from Fig. 8, we can also see that the
handoff blocking probability of SHIP is lower than that of
SIP and MSIP. This is due to the smaller size of an SHIP
handoff signaling message than that of SIP, and the less lo-
cation update procedures in SHIP than in MSIP.
Let the wireless link layer frame error rate is pf = 0.2,
the average velocity of the MN is ν = 20 m/s, and the ra-
dius of the subnet R varies from 400 m to 800 m with a
step value of 50 m. Figure 9 shows the handoff blocking
probability against the radius of the subnet. As shown in
Fig. 9, the handoff blocking probability decreases as the ra-
dius of the subnet increases. A higher value of the radius
of the subnet decreases the border crossing rate for the MN
out of a subnet. Therefore, it results in the lower handoff la-
tency, and then the lower handoff blocking probability. From
13
Fig. 9 Handoff blocking probability versus radius of the subnet
Fig. 9, we can also see that the handoff blocking probability
of SHIP is lower than that of SIP and MSIP. This is due to
the smaller size of an SHIP handoff signaling message than
that of SIP, and the less location update procedures in SHIP
than in MSIP.
Based on the numerical handoff performance investiga-
tion shown above, we can conclude that the proposed SHIP
outperforms SIP and MSIP in terms of reducing the handoff
latency, the packet loss, and the handoff blocking probability
under various scenarios.
6 Conclusion
Due to the historical reasons, mobility management in the
all-IP wireless networks is crucial. SIP is widely used for the
signaling and the mobility management without any modifi-
cations of the lower layer protocols, but it always produces
the large handoff latency and the packet loss. To enable a
better handoff performance, we propose a cross-layer mo-
bility management scheme based on SIP and HIP. The basic
idea of the proposed scheme is that the mobile node and
the correspondent node use their host identity tags to es-
tablish the session connections, and the mobile nodes uses
the HIP location update scheme instead of the SIP location
update scheme to update its location. Therefore, the pro-
posed scheme has a one-suite protocol stack that performs
the seamless mobility and the fast handoff. The analytical
results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms
the typical SIP and the hybrid SIP/Mobile IP in terms of the
handoff latency, the packet loss, and the handoff blocking
probability.
In the proposed scheme, when two nodes want to com-
municate with each other, they firstly need to establish the
HIP layer connection, and then the session connection us-
ing the host identity tags. That is, the session connection is
14
based on the HIP layer connection. As a result, the proposed
scheme needs more initial setup time than the typical SIP-
based mobility management scheme.
Work in progress is to validate the analytical numerical
results by the extensive simulations using the OMNeT++,
which is a public source, modular, component-based and
open-architecture discrete event simulation system. It is also
very interesting to extend the proposed cross-layer scheme
to other mobility types beyond the terminal handoffs.
Acknowledgement We would like to thank the anonymous review-
ers for their detailed reviews, helpful suggestions and constructive
comments, which have helped to improve the quality of this paper.
This work is supported in part by the National Basic Research Pro-
gram of China (“973 program”) under contract No. 2007CB307101
and No. 2007CB307106, in part by the Cultivation Fund of the Key
Scientific and Technical Innovation Project, Ministry of Education of
China under contract No. 706005, and in part by the National Natural
Science Foundation of China under contract No. 60870015.
References
1. Handley, M., Schulzrinne, H., Schooler, E., & Rosenberg, J.
(1999). SIP: session initiation protocol. IETF RFC 2543.
2. Perkins, C. E., Patil, B., & Roberts, P. (2002). IP mobility support
for IPv4. IETF RFC 3220.
3. Johnson, D. B., Perkins, C. E., & Arkko, J. (2004). Mobility sup-
port in IPv6. IETF RFC 3775.
4. Le, D., Fu, X., & Hogrefe, D. (2006). A review of mobility sup-
port paradigms for the Internet. IEEE Communications Survey &
Tutorials, 8(1), 38–51.
5. Stewart, R., Xie, Q., Morneault, K., Sharp, C., Schwarzbauer, H.,
Taylor, T., Rytina, I., Kalla, M., Zhang, L., & Paxson, V. (2000).
Stream control transmission protocol. IETF RFC 2960.
6. Kempf, J. (2007). Goals for network-based localized mobility
management. IETF RFC 4831.
7. Balakrishnan, H., Lakshminarayanan, K., Ratnasamy, S., Shenker,
S., Stoica, I., & Walfish, M. (2004). A layered naming architecture
for the Internet. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Re-
view, 34(4), 343–352.
8. Moskowitz, R., & Nikander, P. (2006). Host identity protocol
(HIP) architecture. IETF RFC 4423.
9. Moskowitz, R., Nikander, P., Jokela, P., & Henderson, T. R.
(2007). Host identity protocol. IETF Internet Draft, draft-ietf-hip-
base-09.
10. Jokela, P., Moskowitz, R., & Nikander, P. (2007). Using ESP trans-
port format with HIP. IETF Internet Draft, draft-ietf-hip-esp-06.
11. Henderson, T. (2007). End-host mobility and multihoming with
the host identity protocol. IETF Internet Draft, draft-ietf-hip-mm-
05.
12. Nikander, P., & Laganier, J. (2007). Host identity protocol (HIP)
domain name system (DNS) extensions. IETF Internet Draft,
draft-ietf-hip-mm-dns-09.
13. Laganier, J., & Eggert, L. (2006). Host identity protocol (HIP)
rendezvous extension. IETF Internet Draft, draft-ietf-hip-rvs-05.
14. Tschofenig, H., Ott, J., Schulzrinne, H., Henderson, T. R., & Ca-
marillo, G. (2007). Interaction between SIP and HIP. IETF Internet
Draft, draft-tschofenig-hiprg-host-identities-05.
15. Politis, C., Chew, K. A., & Tafazolli, R. (2003). Multilayer
mobility management for all-IP networks: pure SIP vs. hybrid
SIP/mobile IP. The 57th IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology
Conference (VTC’2003-Spring) (vol. 4, pp. 2500–2504), Jeju, Ko-
rea.
S. Yang et al.
16. Jung, J., Mudumbai, R., Montgomery, D., & Kahng, H. (2003).
Performance evaluation of two layered mobility management us-
ing mobile IP and session initiation protocol. In Proceedings
of the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBE-
COM’2003) (vol. 3, pp. 1190–1194), San Francisco, USA.
17. Wang, Q., Abu-Rgheff, M. A., & Akram, A. (2004). Design and
evaluation of an integrated mobile IP and SIP framework for ad-
vanced handoff management. In The 2004 IEEE International
Conference on Communications (ICC’2004) (pp. 3921–3925),
Paris, France.
18. Wong, K. D., Dutta, A., Burns, J., Jain, R., & Young, K. (2003).
A multilayered mobility management scheme for auto-configured
wireless IP networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 10(5), 62–
69.
19. Politis, C., Chew, K. A., Akhtar, N., Georgiades, M., & Tafa-
zolli, R. (2004). Hybrid multilayer mobility management with
AAA context transfer capabilities for all-IP networks. IEEE Wire-
less Communications, 11(4), 76–88.
20. Faccin, S. M., Lalwaney, P., & Patil, B. (2004). IP multimedia ser-
vices: analysis of mobile IP and SIP interactions in 3G networks.
IEEE Communications Magazine, 42(1), 113–120.
21. Wang, Q., & Abu-Rgheff, M. A. (2006). Mobility management
architectures based on joint mobile IP and SIP protocols. IEEE
Wireless Communications, 13(6), 68–76.
22. Laganier, J., Koponen, T., & Eggert, L. (2006). Host identity pro-
tocol (HIP) registration extension. IETF Internet Draft, draft-ietf-
hip-registration-02.
23. Bao, G. (1996). Performance evaluation of TCP/RLP protocol
stack over CDMA wireless link. Journal of Wireless Networks
(WINET), 2(3), 229–237.
24. Makaya, C., & Pierre, S. (2008). An analytical framework for per-
formance evaluation of IPv6-based mobility management proto-
cols. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 7(3), 972–
983.
25. Mohanty, S., & Akyildiz, I. F. (2007). Performance analysis of
handoff techniques based on mobile IP, TCP-migrate, and SIP.
IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 6(7), 731–747.
26. Akan, O. B., & Akyildiz, I. F. (2004). ATL: an adaptive transport
layer suite for next-generation wireless Internet. IEEE Journal on
Selected Areas in Communications, 22(5), 802–817.
Shuigen Yang received his B.S.
degree from Beijing Jiaotong Uni-
versity (formerly knows as North-
ern Jiaotong University), Beijing,
China, in June 2004. He is currently
working toward the Ph.D. degree
at the Next Generation Internet Re-
search Center, School of Electronics
and Information engineering, Bei-
jing Jiaotong University, Beijing,
China. His research interests include
the pervasive networking, and the
IP mobility in wireless environment,
especially the mobility management
in the wireless Internet.
SHIP: Cross-layer mobility management scheme based on Session Initiation Protocol and Host Identity
Huachun Zhou received his B.S.
degree from People’s Police Officer
University of China in 1986. He re-
ceived his M.S.E. degree from Bei-
jing Jiaotong University (formerly
knows as Northern Jiaotong Univer-
sity), Beijing, China, in 1989. His
research interests include the com-
puter network and the network man-
agement technologies.
Yajuan Qin received her B.S. and
M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineer-
ing from the University of Elec-
tronic Science and Technology of
China (formerly known as Chengdu
Institute of Radio Engineering) in
1985 and 1988, respectively, and
Ph.D. degree in communication en-
gineering from Beijing University
of Posts and Telecommunications
in 2003. From Jan. 2002 to April
2002, she was a research associate
at CRL, Japan. In 2003, she joined
Beijing Jiaotong University (for-
merly known as Northern Jiaotong
University), where she is now an associate professor. She has pub-
lished more than 30 research papers and is the holder of more than
ten patents. She is also the principle researcher of about ten research
projects founded by the Chinese Government and corporations such as
15
Huawei. She is also the chief researcher of 5 research projects founded
by the Chinese government. Her research interests are in the areas of
computer networks and wireless communications.
Hongke Zhang received his M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and
Communication Systems from the
University of Electronic Science
and Technology of China (formerly
known as Chengdu Institute of Ra-
dio Engineering) in 1988 and 1992,
respectively. From Sep. 1992 to
June 1994, he was a post-doc re-
search associate at Beijing Jiao-
tong University (formerly known as
Northern Jiaotong University). In
July 1994, he jointed the School of
Electronics and Information Engi-
neering, Beijing Jiaotong Univer-
sity, where he is now a professor. He is also the dean of the School of
Electronics and Information Engineering and the director of the Next
Generation Internet Research Center. He has published more than 100
research papers in the areas of communications, computer networks
and information theory. He is the author of eight books written in Chi-
nese. He was the chief investigator of more than 20 research projects
founded by Chinese government and corporations such as Intel, cisco,
Huawei. He is now the chief scientist of the projects “a universal net-
work architecture for supporting pervasive services” founded by the
National Basic Research Program of China (“973 Program”). He is
also a member of the electronics and information science steering com-
mittee of the Ministry of Education, a member of the expert committee
of the national Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), and a
member of the expert committee of the Ministry of Information Indus-
try.