INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Int. J. Commun. Syst. 2010; 00:135

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/dac

Network Mobility Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Yuh-Shyan Chen , Chih-Shun Hsu , Ching-Hsueh Cheng

Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taipei University, New Taipei 237, Taiwan

Department of Information Management, Shih Hsin University, Taipei 116, Taiwan

SUMMARY
The goal of the network mobility (NEMO) management is to effectively reduce the complexity of handoff
procedure and keep mobile devices connecting to the Internet. When users are going to leave an old subnet
and enter a new subnet, the handoff procedure is executed on the mobile device and it may break off the
real time service, such as VoIP or mobile TV, due to the mobility of mobile devices. Since a vehicle is
moving so fast that it may cause the handoff and packet loss problems. Both of the problems will lower
down the throughput of the network. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel NEMO protocol
for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In a highway, since every car is moving in a fixed direction at a
high speed, a car adopting our protocol can acquire an IP address from the VANET through the vehicle-tovehicle communications. The vehicle can rely on the assistance of a front vehicle to execute the pre-handoff
procedure or it may acquire a new IP address through multi-hop relays from the car on the lanes of the same
or opposite direction and thus may reduce the handoff delay and maintain the connectivity to the Internet.
Simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme is able to reduce both the handoff delay and packet
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
loss rate. Copyright
Received . . .

KEY WORDS: Network mobility (NEMO), Mobile router (MR), vehicular ad hoc network, mobility
management, pre-handoff, wireless network, WiMAX.

Correspondence to: Department of Information Management, Shih Hsin University, Taipei 116, Taiwan,

Email:cshsu@cc.shu.edu.tw
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls [Version: 2010/03/27 v2.00]

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

1. INTRODUCTION

Due to the advancement and popularity of the wireless technology, the dream of the ubiquitous
communication has become a reality. Nowadays, users may enjoy many kinds of services through
Internet anytime and anywhere. As the wireless transmission rate increases, more and more
multimedia services have been provided to serve mobile users. No matter the users are in low
mobility (e.g. walking or jogging) or high mobility (e.g. driving a car or taking a bus or a subway),
they all can make a VoIP call, browse website, download data, watch TV, and get road traffic
information or real-time weather report from Internet through wireless communications.
Nowadays, most people go to work by vehicles, so vehicles become more and more important in
our daily life. Since every car can be equipped with a short- or medium-range wireless transceiver,
cars on the road may form a wireless network named as a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). The
VANET is a subclass of the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) that it also has no fixed topology.
Vehicles may acquire information and services through the V2V (Vehicle-to-Vehicle) or I2V
(Infrastructure-to-Vehicle) communications. The V2V communication is based on the Dedicated
Short Range Communications (DSRC) technology; while the I2V communication is based on
GPRS/3G, WiFi or WiMAX.
Since the moving speed of a vehicle in the VANET is so high that it is harder to maintain a
seamless handoff and a stable connectivity to the Internet. To achieve the seamless handoff for an
IP-based communication, the IP of the mobile device must be assigned and reassigned efficiently.
The Mobile Internet Protocol version 4 (MIPv4)[1] has been proposed by the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Since MIPv4 may face problems like the shortage of IP addresses and the weak
security mechanism, MIPv6 [2] is proposed by IETF to alleviate the above problems. Mobile IP
has an important characteristic that it configures the IP address by neighbor discovery or autoconfiguration. There are two auto-configuration mechanisms: the stateful and stateless mechanisms.
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)[3], which has been adopted in both IPv4 and IPv6,
is a stateful auto-configuration mechanism that each IP address is autoconfigured and managed

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

by a DHCP server [4][5]. The stateless auto-configure mechanism is adopted by IPv6, which
creates link-local IPv6 addresses. Although MIPv6 can provide enough IP addresses and better
security mechanism than MIPv4, it is not efficient enough. To improve the efficiency of MIPv6,
IETF has proposed a hierarchical mobile Internet Protocol (HMIPv6)[6]. HMIPv6 adds a new
component named as Mobility Anchor Point (MAP), which manages users location. MAP provides
two types of location management: the macro-mobility and micro-mobility managements, the later
one can improve the handoff efficiency of MIPv6. MIPv4 and MIPv6 are designed to handle the
terminal mobility and are not suitable for handling the network mobility. Therefore, the Request for
Comments (RFC) of IETF has extended MIPv6 to support Network Mobility (NEMO), named as
the NEMO basic support protocol [7]. According to this RFC, mobile network nodes (MNNs) can
only be accessed through mobile router (MR), in other words, all users are not allowed to access
the base station directly. In mobile network, each MR has a home network address. When an MR
moves to the communication range of a new access router, it acquires its care-of Address (CoA)
from the visited network. As long as the MR acquires a CoA, it sends a binding update message to
its home agent (HA). The MR provides connections to MNNs. MNNs get IP addresses through MR
by DHCP and network address translation (NAT) [8].
Various wireless technologies have been provided to support a lot of services via Internet, such
as IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16. IEEE 802.11 has defined the media access control layer and
physical layer for wireless local area networks. It is suitable for the short- or medium-distance
transmission. IEEE 802.11 support two network modes, the ad hoc and the infrastructure modes.
Since the coverage area of the IEEE 802.11-based device is small, it may result in frequent handoff
and may cause high packet loss rate and thus is not suitable for a high mobile environment. To
provide a wide transmission range and a high data rate, WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for
Microwave Access) has been proposed. WiMAX is based on the IEEE 802.16-2004 (802.16d)
standard [9], that it cannot support high mobile nodes. To support high mobile nodes, IEEE 802.16e
[10] has been proposed such that it provides a complete handoff procedure and a power-saving
protocol.

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

In this paper, we propose a novel NEMO protocol for VANETs. Each vehicle in the VANET is
equipped with an MR with two interfaces, e.g. Wi-Fi and WiMAX. The basic idea of this paper,
inspired by [11][12], is shown as follows: When a vehicle is leaving the communication region of
its serving base station (BS) and is moving to the boundary of the target BSs communication region,
it may acquire a new IP address through multi-hop relays [13] from a car on the lanes of the same
or opposite direction and it can assist a vehicle behind of it to perform the pre-handoff. A vehicle
can acquire a new IP address from a vehicle on the lanes of the same direction by IP passing or it
can exchange its IP with vehicles on the lanes of the opposite direction. By using the relay ability
of each vehicle, the handoff efficiency can also be improved. By applying the above ideas, we can
significantly reduce the handoff delay and packet loss rate. Simulations results have shown that the
proposed scheme can efficiently reduce the handoff delay and packet loss rate.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, related works are described.
Section 3 overviews the system architecture, and the basic ideas of the proposed schemes. Section
4 describes the proposed NEMO management scheme for VANETs. Performance evaluation is
presented in Section 5. Section 6 concludes this paper.

2. RELATED WORKS

The handoff delay consists of layer 2 and layer 3 handoff delays. On layer 2, the mobile device
spends time to scan signal strength from BS (802.11 or 802.16), while on layer 3, it spends time
to configure IP address. Particularly, the duplicate address detection (DAD) procedure spends the
most time. To achieve ubiquitous communication, devices equipped with wireless transceivers must
be allowed to be roaming smoothly around the wireless networks with a seamless handoff. To
achieve this, many of the works are focus on the study of reducing handoff delays and improving
the efficiency of network mobility.
MIPv6[2] has been proposed to support the network layer mobility. This mobile IP protocol
allows a mobile node (MN) to maintain the connectivity to the Internet while moving from one
subnet to another. Each MN is identified by its Home address (HoA). When connecting through a
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

foreign network, an MN receives the Router Advertisement, this message includes a foreign network
prefix and an auto-configured Care-of address (CoA). After configuring CoA, an MN must perform
the duplicate address detection (DAD) procedure to guarantee that its CoA is unique. If the CoA is
usable, the MN sends its location information to its home agent (HA) to perform binding update,
which intercepts packets for the MN and tunnels them to the MNs current location. In order to
improve MIPv6 to support the real time handoff, Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 (HMIPv6) [6] and Fast
Mobile IPv6 (FMIPv6) [14] are proposed. Two handoff modes are provided by FMIPv6, namely the
predictive fast handoff mode and reactive fast handoff mode. In the predictive fast handoff mode, an
MN has a previous CoA (PCoA) in the previous access router (pAR). When the MN has received
the Router Advertisement message from the new access router (nAR), it can acquire a new CoA
(NCoA).
When performing the binding update, the PCoA and NCoA of the MN are sent to the pAR. The
pAR sends a HI (handoff initial) message to perform the DAD procedure. As long as the NCoA is
available, the MN sends an HACK (handoff ACK) to the pAR and the pAR sends a fast binding
ACK to the MN subsequently. When an MN enters a new subnet, it sends a fast advertisement
notification (FAN) to the nAR to ensure that its NCoA wont be used by the other MNs and to
establish a tunnel between the pAR and the nAR. The packets for the MN will be buffered in the
nAR. The cross-layer designs, including [15] and [16], aim to reduce both the packet loss rate
and the handoff delay so as to achieve a seamless handoff. When a device executes the handoff
procedure, it performs layer 2 handoff first and then subsequent by layer 3 handoff. When a device
is moving from the serving BS to the target BS, it shall execute the handoff procedure, which may
cause many signalings and thus reduces throughput. Therefore, the IETF has proposed a protocol
called NEMO [7] for MIPv6 (named as MIPv6-NEMO), which provides transparency for NEMO.
A survey of NEMO is conducted in[17]. Although NEMO provides a good mobility management
but its handoff procedure cannot work properly in the vehicular environment.
Several schemes[18] [19] [20] [21] study network mobility so as to improve the layer 3 handoff.
Zhong et al.[19] propose a handoff scheme to support network mobility over 802.16e. This paper

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

considers both of the layer 2 and layer 3 handoff, but majorly for layer 3 handoff. Naoe et al. [21]
propose a scheme called NEMO-SHO, which has improved the NEMO basic protocol and can be
applied to the heterogeneous access network (Cellular networks and WLAN). In order to achieve
a seamless vertical handoff, each mobile router (MR) is equipped with two interfaces. The first
interface is for the current link and the second interface is for the new link. When the MR is moving
from the serving BS to the target BS, two operations are performed. First, the MR individually
establishes two bi-directional tunnels simultaneously, one is between the pAR and the MR via the
first interface, another is between the nAR and the MR via the second interface. When the new
wireless link is established via the second interface, the MR sends a local binding update (LBU),
which contains the PCoA, to the home agent. With the multi-interface mobile router and the multihoming concepts, a seamless handoff can be achieved. Lin et al. [20] propose a hybrid handoff
scheme with multiple mobile routers called Intelligent Control Entity (ICE). It can support multihoming for NEMO and improve the handoff problem of the NEMO basic protocol. An access router
can manage a number of access points (AP). The ICE can choose the best access router (AR) for an
MR. To provide a seamless handoff, the ICE supports the intra-domain handoff and inter-domain
handoff.
A handover scheme with geographic mobility awareness (HGMA) is proposed in [32].
The historical handover patterns of mobile devices is considered in HGMA. HGMA prevents
unnecessary handovers according to the received signal strength and moving speeds of mobile
devices. A handover candidate selection method is proposed in HGMA for mobile devices to
select a subset of WiFi access points or WiMAX relay stations for scanning. In HGMA scheme,
Mobile devices prefer to stay in their original WiMAX or WiFi networks so as to prevent mobile
devices from consuming too much energy on interface switching. An SIP-based mobile network
architecture for supporting network mobility is proposed in [22]. This approach depends on the
lower layer movement detection to trigger the high layer handoff procedure. A Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP)-based cross-layer scheme is proposed in [33] so as to support seamless handover over
heterogeneous networks. This scheme consists of a battery lifetime-based handover policy and a

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

cross-layer fast handover scheme, called the SIP-based mobile stream control transmission protocol
(SmSCTP). Han et al. [18] propose a reactive handoff for NEMO. It analyzes the operations of
MIPv6, including the movement detection (MD) on layer 2 and address configuration on layer 3.
The reactive handoff is based on HMIPV6 and NEMO. The reactive handoff procedure optimizes
the MD procedure and address configuration as follows. Initially, the MN establishes a connection
to a new AP and sends the regional CoA (RCoA) to the AP. The AP sends a new-connection
notification message to the AR on network layer. The AR selects an IP address from the unique
address pool and acquires the local CoA (LCoA). The LCoA will be used for the MN. Finally,
the AR sends a router advertisement directly to the MN. C.W. Lee et al. [23] propose a crosslayer (Layer2 and Layer 3) network mobility management and resource allocation scheme for
the QoS handoff referred as HiMIP-NEMO. This approach combine the design of routing and
resource allocation. The foreign mobility agent (FMA) provides the fast and reliable QoS handoff.
The HiMIP-NEMO incorporates both the registration protocol and the QoS handoff protocol to
reduce the latency and packet loss rate. A survey on mobility management for vehicular networks is
proposed in [24]. In this paper, the requirements of mobility management for vehicular networks are
identified. Existing mobility management schemes are reviewed and classified based on the vehicleto-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications. This paper also discussed
the differences between host-based and network-based mobility management. An architecture for
interworking heterogeneous all-IP networks is proposed in [25]. This framework enables any 3G
cellular technology to interwork with a broadband wireless access system or a wireless local area
network. Several performance metrics such as vertical handoff delay, transient packet loss, jitter and
signaling cost relating to vertical handoff management are investigated in this paper. The problem
of IP mobility and its specific requirements in vehicular networks are addressed in [26]. This paper
provides a qualitative comparison among the existing IP mobility solutions. Their improvements
and weaknesses with respect to the current standard are also described.
Recently, many researches about proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) have been proposed. Bernardos
et al. [27] describe PMIPv6 and its current trends in standardization. Three extensions for

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

PMIPv6, namely, flow mobility, multicast and network mobility support, are considered by
the standardization bodies to enhance the basic protocol. Recently, the draft of the PMIPv6based solution for distributed mobility management is proposed in [28]. This solution brings the
mobility anchor closer to the MN. The Mobility Anchor and Access Routers (MAARs) provide
IP connectivity to a set of MNs and are also the mobility managers for those MNs. An interLMA handoff and location management scheme using core-edge separation network for global
mobility management is proposed in [29]. A PMIPv6-based NEMO (P-NEMO) is presented in [30]
to maintain the Internet connectivity of vehicles and it does not participate in the management of
location update while vehicles are moving. To improve handover performance, an extension protocol
of P-NEMO named as fast P-NEMO (FP-NEMO) is developed. FP-NEMO anticipate the handovers
of vehicle by utilizing wireless L2 events. The handover of the vehicle is prepared before the vehicle
attaches to the new access network by the mobility service provisioning entities. Qualitative and
quantitative analyses of the host-based (i.e. MIPv6) and network-based mobility management (i.e.
PMIPv6) approaches are presented in [31]. The authors investigate a comparison among the existing
mobility support protocols.
Most of the above works try to reduce the layer 2 or layer 3 handoff delay based on NEMO, so as
to provide a seamless handoff. As VANETs become more and more popular, NEMO management
becomes more and more important. Since vehicles are moving so fast, we must improve the NEMO
basic support protocol for VANETs. Hence, we propose a novel network mobility management
scheme for VANETs so as to reduce the macro mobility handoff time and packet loss rate.

3. PRELIMINARY

In this section, we first describe the assumptions and system architecture, and then we explain the
challenges and the basic idea of this work.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

CN

Internet

HA

pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

CN: corresponding node

HA: home agent
pAR: previous access router
nAR: new access router
MR: mobile router

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

802.11 connection

Figure 1. System architecture

3.1. System Architecture

A novel network mobility protocol for VANETs is proposed in this paper. Network mobility protocol
for VAVET assumes that each of the vehicle is equipped with at least a mobile router. The system
architecture of our protocol is shown in Fig.1. The scenario of our protocol is a highway with four
lanes. Our protocol is based on the network mobility (NEMO) concept and combine the property of
multi-hop VANETs. In WiMAX or Wi-Fi environment, the base station (BS) (or Access point (AP))
is managed by the access router (AR). The home agent (HA) records the vehicles new location
and the Correspondence Node (CN) serves as a remote server e.g. FTP, Web server etc. The car
and bus can connect to the Internet through the mobile router with the wireless communication
technology e.g. IEEE 802.11 or 802.16. In our system architecture, the mobile router has a special
function to assist the pre-handoff procedure. When a bus wants to perform the handoff procedure via
the cooperative vehicles mobile router(CV-MR), which can detect neighboring BSs advertisement
message. Since the bus is still not in the coverage area of the target BS, it must find the other
vehicles mobile router, which is in the overlay area of the serving BSs coverage area and target
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

10

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Layer 3 mobility

Layer 3 mobility
802.16
MAC

802.11
MAC

802.16
PHY

802.11
PHY

MR NIC

Wi-Fi

802.11
MAC

802.16
MAC

802.11
MAC

802.11
MAC

802.11
MAC

802.11
PHY

802.16
PHY

802.11
PHY

802.11
PHY

802.11
PHY

MN NIC

MR NIC

Wi-Fi

MN NIC

Wi-Fi

MN NIC

MR NIC: Mobile Router Network Interface Card

MN NIC: Mobile Node Network Interface Card

Figure 2. Mobile router protocol stacks.

BSs coverage area, to assist the handoff. As soon as the bus enters the target BSs coverage
area, the mobile router can perform partial layer 3 handoff procedure. The mobile router has two
interfaces, including an outgoing interface via WiMAX and an incoming interface via Wi-Fi. The
communication between vehicles is via the Wi-Fi interface. Fig.2 shows the protocol stack of the
mobile router.
The protocol stacks of the vehicle and bus are shown as follows:

1) The protocol stack of a vehicle: Each vehicle is equipped with a mobile router, which is
equipped with two communication interfaces, including the WiMAX and Wi-Fi interfaces.
The mobile network node is equipped with only one communication interface, the Wi-Fi
interface. Since the backbone is the WiMAX architecture and the mobile network node is not
equipped with the WiMAX interface, the mobile network node connect to the MR via the
Wi-Fi interface and then connects to the Internet via the MRs WiMAX interface.
2) The protocol stack of a bus: Each bus is equipped with one or more mobile routers, which are
equipped with two communication interfaces, including the WiMAX and Wi-Fi interfaces.
The mobile network node decides to adopt one hop or multi-hop communications to the
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

FMR

11

RMR

NB

PDA

PDA

NB

(b)

(a)

PDA
NB

NB

(c)

PDA
NB

NB

NB

(d)

Figure 3. Network mobility scenario: (a) NEMO on a real Bus (b)NEMO on a Virtual Bus with two vehicles
(c) NEMO on a Virtual Bus with three vehicles (d) NEMO on a Virtual Bus with more than three vehicles

mobile router according to the distance between the mobile network node and the mobile
router. If the mobile network node is far from the mobile router, it communicates with
the mobile router via multi-hop communications. Otherwise, it may adopt the one hop
communication to directly communicate with the mobile router.

The network mobility scenarios of the proposed protocol are shown in Fig.3. As shown in
Fig.3(a), the real bus is equipped with two mobile routers, the front mobile router (FMR) and the
rear mobile router (RMR). The FMR and RMR are connected by wires. The users on the bus connect
to the RMR either directly or via multi-hop wireless communications. As shown in Fig.3(b), a front
vehicle and a following small bus may form a virtual bus. The MR of the front vehicle serves as
an FMR, while the MR of the following small bus serves as an RMR. However on a virtual bus,
the FMR and RMR are connected via wireless communication. Fig. 3(c) and (d) shows two larger
virtual buses. Each of the virtual bus consists of more than two vehicles. The MRs of the vehicles
on the virtual bus are also connected via wireless communication.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

12

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

On a highway, since the vehicles are moving so fast that it may pass several base stations within
a few seconds. If the handoff procedure cannot finish in time, disconnection may occur. To solve
this problem, we adopt the bus-like model as mentioned in the previous paragraph. The FMR uses
the relay function, which has been defined in IEEE 802.16j, to assist the RMR to perform the prehandoff procedure and thus reduces the handoff delay of the RMR.

3.2. Basic Idea and Challenges

When a mobile node moves to a new subnet, the mobile router (MR) will receive a broadcast packet
from the target BS and most importantly perform the handoff procedure. The traditional handoff
procedure includes two parts, the layer 2 and layer 3 handoff procedures. The handoff procedure
contains signal measurement, network layer movement detection, DAD procedure and registration.
The DAD procedure is time consuming and thus will cause the link to be disconnected. Although
NEMO does not require every mobile node to perform the layer 2 and layer 3 handoff, but it can
still perform the above works through an MR. In VANETs, since the vehicle is moving so fast that
the handoff procedure must be simplified. Our protocol, based on IP passing [12], can acquire IP
address faster than the traditional handoff procedure. The basic idea of our protocol is to perform
the fast handoff by the assistance of other vehicles on the VANET.
Our idea comes from a real bus mentioned in Fig. 3(a). The bus is assumed to be equipped with
the Wi-Fi and WiMAX interfaces, where the Wi-Fi interface is for V2V communication and the
WiMAX interface is used to connect to the Internet. If there is any vehicle on the lanes of the
opposite direction, the mobile router may acquire its IP address from a vehicle on the lanes of the
opposite direction. For example in Fig.4, the bus has two MRs, called BMR1 and BMR2 . BMR1
and BMR2 are connected by a wire and thus causes a few end to end delay. When BMR1 receives
the advertisement of the target BS, it informs BMR2 to prepare the handoff procedure. BMR2 sends
a request message called the get IP address packet to ask BMR1 to assist its pre-handoff, and then
BMR1 replies an allowance message to BMR2 . As shown in Fig.4(a), when a bus is entering a new
subnet, BMR1 will assist BMR2 to get its IP address. Since there is no any vehicle on the lanes
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

13

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

Internet

HA

CN
pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server
WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

BMR2

BMR1

PDA

NB

NB

BMR1

BMR2
NB

PDA

NB

(a)
Internet

HA

CN
pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

CMR1

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

CMR2
BMR1
NB

BMR2
NB
PDA
PDA

(b)

Figure 4. (a) Acquire IP address from the lanes of the opposite direction. (b)Acquire IP address from the
lanes of the same direction.

of the same direction released its IP address, BMR1 may acquire the IP address from BMR1 or

BMR2 , which are the mobile routers of the bus on the lanes of the opposite direction. Initially, all
mobile network nodes (PDA, NB) receive data form the correspondence node (CN) via the home
agent (HA) and BMR2 . If BMR2 performs pre-handoff, it will send a pre-handoff request to BMR1 .
When two buses on the opposite direction are entering the new subnet. Since they cannot acquire IP
addresses from the vehicle on the lanes of the same direction, the MRs of the two buses BMR1 and

BMR1 exchange their IP addresses.

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

14

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

However, if there is no any vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction, the mobile router may
acquire the IP address from the vehicle on the lanes of the same direction. When the mobile router
of a vehicle (CMR1 ) is going to leave the target BSs communication region, it passes its IP address
to CMR2 , which is the MR of the back vehicle, by multi-hop communications. For example in
Fig.4(b), when CMR1 is going to leave the target BSs communication region, CMR1 passes its IP
address to BMR1 through CMR2 by multi-hop communications (CMR1 CMR2 BMR1 ).
The concept of our protocol is similar to [15], [11] that the cooperative node can assist other
mobile nodes to perform pre-handoff. However, the real bus scheme has two drawbacks: First, the
distance between BMR1 and BMR2 is too short to reduce enough handoff latency through the prehandoff procedure performed by BMR1 and thus cannot provide a seamless handoff when the speed
of the vehicle is high. Second, each vehicle needs to equip with two MRs in the real bus scheme
and thus increases the hardware cost. To improve the real bus scheme, we propose a virtual bus
scheme, which consists of at least two vehicles. Each vehicle only needs to equip with an MR and
thus reduces the hardware cost. Since the distance between the front vehicle and rear vehicle is
longer than the distance between BMR1 and BMR2 , the pre-handoff procedure performed by the
front vehicle can be done long before the rear vehicle leaving the serving BS and thus reduces more
handoff latency.

4. A NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VANETS

Our NEMO protocol contains two algorithms, one for the real bus and one for the virtual bus.
Every algorithm is split into the following phases: the information collecting phase, the fast IP
acquiring phase, the cooperation of mobile routers phase, the make before break phase, and the
route redirection phase.
In the information collecting phase, each vehicle uses its mobile router to broadcast its own and its
neighboring vehicles locations, moving speeds, and directions periodically. Besides, it should also
rebroadcast the messages it received according to the TTL (time to live) of the messages. If the TTL
of a message is greater than 0, then the message should be rebroadcast. The TTL is set according to
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

15

the intended size of the virtual bus and the communication range of the base station. After collecting
the information of the nearby vehicles, a vehicle can realize the neighboring vehicles locations,
moving speeds, and directions and thus can group proper vehicles to form a virtual bus and can
choose a proper cooperative vehicles to assist it to perform the prehandoff procedure at the proper
moment.

4.1. Algorithm A: The NEMO Scheme for a Real Bus

In this algorithm, the bus is equipped with two mobile routers, the first mobile router (BMR1 )
performs the pre-handoff procedure and the second mobile router (BMR2 ) serves the mobile nodes
and maintains the connectivity to the Internet.
If there is at least a vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction that has an available IP address,
the per-handoff procedure is performed as follows:

S1: The mobile network nodes connect to the Internet via BMR2 .
S2: BMR2

ACQ IPREQ

BMR1 : If there is at least a vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction,

the mobile router acquires its IP address from a vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction.
When a bus enters a new subnet, BMR1 assists BMR2 to get an IP address. BMR1 acquires the
IP address from a bus on the lanes of the opposite direction. For example in Fig.5(a), all mobile
network nodes (PDA, NB) receive data form CN via the home agent (HA) and BMR2 . If
BMR2 is going to perform the pre-handoff procedure, BMR2 sends the pre-handoff request to

BMR1 . Similarly, when a bus on the lanes of the opposite direction enters a new subnet, BMR2
is going to perform the pre-handoff procedure and it sends an acquire IP address request to

BMR1 . If there is no any available IP address on the lanes of the same direction. Under such

circumstance, two MRs (BMR1 and BMR2 ) of the two buses exchange their IP addresses.
When there is no any vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction, but there is at least a vehicle on
the lanes of the same direction ahead of the bus, the per-handoff procedure is performed as follows:

S1: The mobile network nodes connect to the Internet via BMR2 .
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

16

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Internet

HA

CN

pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server
WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

BMR2

NB

NB

BMR1

PDA

BMR1

NB

BMR2

PDA

NB

(a)
Internet

HA

CN
pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

CMR1

CMR2
BMR1
NB

BMR2
NB
PDA
PDA

(b)

Figure 5. (a)Acquire IP address from the vehicle on the lanes of the opposition direction. (b)Acquire IP
address from the vehicle on the lanes of the same direction.

S2: When there is no any vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction, the mobile router acquires
the IP address from a vehicle on the lanes of the same direction. When BMR1 has received
the advertisement of the target BS, it informs BMR2 to prepare for the handoff procedure.
The BMR2 sends a request message called the get IP address packet to BMR1 and asks
BMR2 to assist the pre-handoff procedure. BMR1 then reply an allowance message to BMR2 .
When the mobile router of a vehicle (CMR1 ) is going to leave the target BSs communication
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

17

region, it passes its IP address to the MR of another vehicle (CMR2 ) behind of it by multihop communications. For example in Fig.5(b), all mobile network nodes (PDA, NB) receive
data form CN via the home agent (HA) and BMR2 . When BMR2 has received the ready
handoff message from BMR1 , BMR2 performs the handoff procedure by sending the acquire
IP address request to BMR1 . The IP address of CMR1 is passed to BMR1 by multi-hop
communications (CMR1 CMR2 BMR1 ).
If the IP address cannot be acquired through the above procedures, it acquires its IP address
through the DHCP procedure. After acquired an IP address, the mobile router performs the
following steps.
PREBU

S3: BMR1 = HA : After BMR1 got an IP address, BMR1 performs pre-binding update to the
home agent (HA) when BMR2 is added into the new subnet, as show in Fig. 6(a).
S4: BMR2

Disconnect

pAR : When BMR1 helps BMR2 to perform the pre-handoff procedure, BMR2

establishes a connection to HA. Even BMR2 has entered the target BSs communication
region, the old connection between the serving BS and BMR2 still exists until BMR2 is away
from the serving BSs communication region, as show in Fig.6(b).
RR

S5: BMR2 = CN : The network mobility route redirection is similar to MIPv6. When BMR2
has moved to the communication region of the target BS, all of the packets from CN to HA
and HA to nAR to mobile network nodes are via BMR2 , which may cause the network to
be overloaded. Therefore, NEMO route redirection must be performed with CN. The packets
form CN is directly transferred to BMR2 , does not need to via HA again, as shown in Fig.7.
The message flow diagram of the real bus scheme is shown in Fig. 8, which summarizes the steps
of algorithm A.

4.2. Algorithm B: Virtual Bus network mobility protocol

In VANETs, how to acquire IP addresses immediately is a very important issue. In this subsection,
the bus is only equipped with a mobile router but still with WiMAX and Wi-Fi interfaces. Two
or more neighboring vehicles on the lanes of the same or opposite direction may be grouping as
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

18

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Internet

HA

CN
nAR

pAR
DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

BMR1

BMR2

NB

PDA NB PDA

(a)

Internet

HA

CN

nAR

pAR
DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

BMR1

BMR2

NB

PDA NB PDA

(b)

Figure 6. (a) Binding update by BMR2 . (b) Disconnect the old link.

Internet

HA

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Point

BMR1
NB

CN
pAR

nAR

BMR2
PDA NB

PDA

Figure 7. NEMO route redirection.

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

19

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

FMR1

RMR2

Serving-BS

DHCP Server

Target-BS

DHCP Server

pAR

Release IP of MR

HA

CN

nAR
Packet forwarding

Packet forwarding

Link layer handoff procedure

Request
Reply

Acquire unique IP

Request
Reply (Fail)

Acquire IP

Binding Update
Binding ACK

Packet tunnel

Disconnect

Packet forwarding

Binding Update
Binding Update ACK

Packet forwarding

Figure 8. The message flow diagram of the real bus scheme.

a virtual bus. If no vehicle on the lanes of the same direction is at the target BSs communication
region and the mobile router of the virtual bus cannot acquire the target BSs IP address at the serving
BS communication region. In the worst case, a vehicle can get its IP address from the DHCP server
but this approach will spend too much time and cause a longer handoff delay.
Without loss of generality, assume that in the serving BSs communication region, three
neighboring vehicles on the lanes of the same direction are grouping as a virtual bus. Assume that
there are three vehicles (CMR1 , CMR2 and CMR3 ) on the lanes of the opposite direction, the vehicle
may perform the pre-handoff procedure as follows.

S1: The mobile network nodes connect to the Internet via virtual BMR3 .
S2: Virtual BMR3

ACQ IPREQ

Virtual BMR1 : The mobile router (BMR3 ) of the virtual bus sends an

acquire IP address request to the front mobile router (BMR2 ) of the virtual bus. Since BMR2
is still not at the target BSs communication region, it forwards the request to BMR1 . When
BMR1 receives the request, it accepts the request message as shown in Fig.9(a).
S3: CMR3

ACQ IPREQ

CMR1 : On the lanes of the opposite direction, there are three vehicles

moving from the serving BS to the target BSs communication region, the mobile router
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

20

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

(CMR3 ) sends a request message to the front mobile router (CMR2 ) of the front vehicle.
CMR2 is still at the srving BSs communication region, it forwards the request to CMR1 . At
this moment, CMR1 accepts the request message because it is at the communication regions
of both the serving BS and the target BS. When CMR1 and BMR1 are both at the same
communication regions of both the serving BS and the target BS, CMR2 and BMR2 can
exchange their IP addresses via CMR1 and BMR1 and thus can previously acquire their IP
addresses, as shown in Fig.9(a).
When there is no any vehicle on the lanes of the opposite direction but there are some front
vehicles on the lanes of the same direction, the pre-handoff procedure of the first two steps are the
same as the previous case. The third step is performed as follows:
S3: CMR1

IPPASSING

Virtual BMR1 : If the mobile router of a vehicle (CMR1 ) is going to leave

the target BSs communication region, it releases its IP address and passes the IP address
back to the virtual BMR1 via multi-hop communications (CMR1 CMR2 BMR1 ) or it
may release its IP address back to the DHCP server as shown in Fig.9(b).
If the IP address cannot be acquired through the above procedures, it acquires the IP address
through the DHCP procedure. After acquired the IP address, the mobile router performs the
following steps.
BU

S4: Virtual BMR1 = HA: BMR3 has finished acquiring a unique IP address. When BMR3 enters
the new BSs communication region, BMR3 sends a binding update to HA. HA receives the
message and responds a binding ACK as shown in Fig 10.
Bitunnel

S5: Virtual BMR3 = HA: When the mobile router (BMR3 ) is moving to the new BSs
communication region but still not leaving the communication region of the serving BS,
BMR3 maintains the old link to the serving BS and establishes a new link to the new BS
so as to achieve soft-handoff. BMR3 maintains the old bidirectional tunnel and establishes
a new bidirectional tunnel to the new BS. The packet will be delivered from CN to virtual
BMR3 via HA.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

Internet

HA

CN
nAR

pAR
DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

CMR3

21

CMR2

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

CMR1

BMR1

BMR3

BMR2

NB

PDA

(a)
Internet

HA

CN
nAR

pAR
DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

CMR1

CMR1

BMR1

BMR3

BMR2

NB

PDA

(b)

Figure 9. (a) A vehicle of the virtual bus acquire IP address from the vehicle on the lanes of the opposite
direction. (b)A vehicle of the virtual bus acquire IP address from the vehicle on the lanes of the same
direction.

S6: Virtual BMR2

Disconnect

HA: When the mobile router BMR3 of the virtual bus detects that the

target BSs signal strength has reached the handoff threshold, BMR3 disconnects the link to
the old BS, as shown in Fig 11(a).
BU

S7: Virtual BMR2 = CN: The mobile router (BMR3 ) of the virtual bus sends the binding update
to CN. It informs CN with CoA and mobile network prefix. This can redirect the route between
the mobile router and CN as shown in Fig.11(b).
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

22

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Internet

HA

CN
pAR

nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

BMR2

BMR1

NB

BMR3
PDA

Figure 10. NEMO Binding update.

Internet

HA
nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

BMR1

CN
pAR

BMR3

BMR2
NB

PDA

(a)

Internet

HA
nAR

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

BMR1

CN
pAR

WiMAX BS/
WLAN Access Pointer

BMR3

BMR2
NB

PDA

(b)

Figure 11. (a) NEMO Make Before Break.(b) Route redirection Phase.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

23

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

Virtual Bus
BMR
NB

CMR

Serving-BS
CMR

Target-BS

DHCP Server

DHCP Server

Releases IP of MR

HA

CN

PDA

pAR

nAR

Packet forwarding

Link layer handoff procedure

Request

Request
Reply

Reply

Acquire unique IP

Request
3+

Reply
(Fail)

Request
Reply
(Fail)
4+

Acquire IP

Binding Update
Binding ACK

Packet tunnel

Packet forwarding

Disconnect
Binding Update
Binding Update ACK
Packet forwarding

Figure 12. The message flow diagram of the virtual bus scheme.

The message flow diagram of the virtual bus scheme is shown in Fig. 12, which summarizes the
steps of algorithm B.
According to the above description, we can see that the proposed virtual bus scheme can reduce
the handoff latency and packet loss rate by the pre-handoff procedure performed by the front vehicle
in the virtual bus and thus the handoff can be done long before the rear vehicle leaving the serving
BS. Besides, the proposed virtual bus scheme can also reduce the hardware cost such that each
vehicle is only equipped with an MR.

5. SIMULATION RESULTS

To evaluate the performance of our protocol, we simulate the original network mobility basic support
protocol [7], the fast network mobility protocol [14] and our protocol on Network Simulator-2 (ns2)[34]. For the simplicity of describing the simulation results, the original network mobility basic
support protocol is denoted as NEMO, the fast network mobility protocol is denoted as FNEMO, our
protocol based on a real bus is denoted as Bus, and our protocol based on a virtual bus is denoted as
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

24

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Virtual Bus. Each simulation result is derived from the average of 10 simulations. The performance
metrics that will be analyzed in our simulations are shown as follows:
Handoff latency

The handoff latency is defined as the interval that the last packet is received from the pAR to
the time that the first packet is received from the nAR.
Packet loss rate

The total number of lost packets over the total number of transmitting packets.
Handoff jitter

The handoff jitter is count during the handoff time. Assume that there are three consecutive
packets, denoted as Pi2 , Pi1 and Pi , received by the mobile router. Let Ti2 , Ti1 and Ti
denoted as the time to receive packets Pi2 , Pi1 and Pi , respectively. The handoff jitter is
defined as HJ j2 = (Ti - Ti1 )-(Ti1 -Ti2 )=Ti -2Ti1 +Ti2 .
Message overhead

The total number of IP-passing packets and the packets to discover CV-MR (cooperative
vehicle mobile router).
Throughput

The throughput is defined as the total amount of mesages received by the destination per
second.
Simulation parameters are shown in Table I.

5.1. Handoff latency

Fig. 13 shows the handoff latencies of the NEMO, FNEMO, Bus, and Virtual Bus schemes. The
handoff latency of the Virtual Bus scheme is the lowest, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO
schemes. Fig. 13(a) illustrates the impact of vehicle speed to handoff latency. In this simulation,
there are total 50 vehicles. As the vehicle speed increases, the handoff latency also increases. Both
of the Bus and Virtual Bus schemes perform better than the FNEMO and NEMO schemes because
the mobile router in our scheme can perform pre-handoff procedure and thus reduces the handoff
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

25

Table I. Simulation parameters

Network size

1000m 1000m

Number of vehicles

0 100

Vehicle speed

5 100 km/h

Transmission range of WiMAX

1000m

Transmission range of WLAN

300m

Packet size

320 bytes

Packet rate

100 packets/sec

Simulation Time

200sec

latency. The handoff latency of the Virtual Bus scheme is lower than that of the Bus scheme because
the MR on the front vehicle of the virtual bus can perform the pre-handoff procedure earlier than
the FMR on the real bus and thus reduces more handoff latency. The FNEMO performs better than
the NEMO scheme because the predictive fast handoff mode and reactive fast handoff mode of
FNEMO can reduce a few handoff latency of the NEMO scheme. Fig. 13(b) illustrates the impact
of vehicle density to handoff latency. The number of vehicles is tuned between 10 100. Each
vehicle is moving at a fixed speed (50km/h). As the vehicle density increase, the handoff latency
also increases because higher vehicle density may incur more congestions and contentions and thus
increases the handoff latency. The Virtual Bus scheme still performs the best, followed by the Bus,
FNEMO, and NEMO schemes. Fig. 13(c) illustrates the impact of hop count of IP passing to handoff
latency. As the hop count increases, the handoff latency also increases because more hop count may
bring longer time to pass IP to the target MR and thus increases the handoff latency. The Virtual
Bus scheme still performs better than the Bus scheme. Fig. 13(d) illustrates the impact of the length
of virtual bus (hops) to handoff latency. As the length of virtual bus (hops) increases, the handoff
latency also increases because longer length of the virtual bus may bring longer time to pass IP to
the target MR. Three vehicle speeds are considered, including 20km/h, 60km/h, and 100km/h. The
lower the vehicle speed is the lower the handoff latency becomes.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

26

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Figure 13. (a) Handoff latency vs. vehicle speed. (b) Handoff latency vs. vehicle density.(c) Handoff latency
vs. hop count of IP passing (hops). (d) Handoff latency vs. Length of virtual BUS (hops)

5.2. Packet loss Rate

Fig. 14 shows the packet loss rates of the NEMO, FNEMO, Bus, and Virtual Bus schemes. The
packet loss rate of the Virtual Bus scheme is the lowest, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO
schemes. As mentioned in the previous subsection, the handoff latency of the Virtual Bus scheme
is the lowest. Therefore, the vehicle adopting the Virtual Bus scheme, whose connection to the
Internet is less likely to be broken during the handoff procedure, incurs lower packet loss rate.
Fig. 14(a) illustrates the impact of vehicle speed to packet loss rate. As the vehicle speed increases,
the packet loss rate also increases because higher vehicle speed may incur more frequent handoff
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

27

and can tolerate lower handoff latency and thus causes the connection to the Internet more easily to
be broken during the handoff procedure. Hence, on a high speed vehicle, the packet is more likely to
be lost during the handoff procedure. Both of the Bus and Virtual Bus schemes perform better than
the FNEMO and NEMO schemes because our schemes incur less handoff latency. The packet loss
rates of the Bus scheme grows faster than that of the Virtual Bus scheme because higher vehicle
speed can only tolerate low handoff latency and the handoff latency of the Bus scheme is higher
than that of the Virtual Bus scheme and thus incurs higher packet loss rate. Fig. 14(b) illustrates
the impact of vehicle density to packet loss rate. As the vehicle density increases, the packet loss
rate also increases because higher vehicle density may incur higher handoff latency and thus the
connection to the Internet is more likely to be broken. The Virtual Bus scheme still performs the
best, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO schemes. Fig. 14(c) illustrates the impact of hop
count of IP passing to packet loss rate. As the hop count increases, the packet loss rate also increases
because more hop count may incur higher handoff latency and thus causes more lost packets. The
Virtual Bus scheme still performs better than the Bus scheme. Fig. 14(d) illustrates the impact of
the length of virtual bus (hops) to packet loss rate. As the length of virtual bus (hops) increases, the
packet loss rate also increases because a longer virtual bus may incur higher handoff latency. Three
vehicle speeds are considered, including 20km/h, 60km/h, and 100km/h. The lower the vehicle
speed is the lower the packet loss rate becomes.

5.3. Handoff jitter

Fig. 15 shows the handoff jitters of the NEMO, FNEMO, Bus, and Virtual Bus schemes. Similar
to the results of previous subsections, the handoff jitter of the Virtual Bus scheme is the lowest,
followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO schemes. Fig. 15(a) illustrates the impact of vehicle
speed to handoff jitter. As the vehicle speed increases, the handoff jitter also increases. The Virtual
Bus scheme performs the best, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO schemes. Fig. 15(b)
illustrates the impact of vehicle density to handoff jitter. As the vehicle density increase, the handoff
jitter also increases. The Virtual Bus scheme still performs the best, followed by the Bus, FNEMO,
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

28

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Figure 14. (a)Packet loss rate vs. vehicle speed. (b) Packet loss rate vs. vehicle density.(c)Packet loss rate vs.
hop count of IP passing (hops). (d) Packet loss rate vs. Length of virtual BUS (hops)

and NEMO schemes. Fig. 15(c) illustrates the impact of hop count of IP passing to handoff jitter.
As the hop count increases, the handoff jitter also increases. The Virtual Bus scheme still performs
better than the Bus scheme. Fig. 15(d) illustrates the impact of the length of virtual bus (hops) to
handoff jitter. As the length of virtual bus (hops) increases, the handoff jitter also increases. Three
vehicle speeds are considered, including 20km/h, 60km/h, and 100km/h. The lower the vehicle
speed is the lower the handoff jitter becomes.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

29

Figure 15. (a)Handoff jitter vs. vehicle speed. (b)Handoff jitter vs. vehicle density.(c)Handoff jitter vs. hop
count of IP passing (hops). (d) Handoff jitter vs. Length of virtual BUS (hops).

5.4. Message overhead

Since the NEMO and FNEMO schemes have no IP-passing packets and do not need to discover
CV-MR (cooperative vehicle mobile router). Their message overhead is zero. Therefore we do not
compare the proposed schemes with the NEMO and FNEMO schemes in term of the message
overhead. Fig. 16 shows the message overhead of the Bus and Virtual Bus schemes. The message
overhead of the Bus scheme is lower than that of the Virtual Bus scheme because on a real bus,
the transmission between the RMR and FMR is single hop and via wires; while on a virtual bus,
the transmission between the RMR and FMR may be more than a hop and it is wireless. Fig. 16(a)
illustrates the impact of vehicle speed to message overhead. As the vehicle speed increases, the
message overhead of the Virtual Bus scheme also increases because of the nature of multi-hop
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

30

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

wireless communications. The message overhead of the Bus scheme is insensitive to vehicle speed
because the transmission between the RMR and FMR is through wires. Fig. 16(b) illustrates the
impact of vehicle density to message overhead. As the vehicle density increases, the message
overhead also increases because higher vehicle density may incur more congestions and contentions
and thus increases the message overhead. The message overhead of the Virtual Bus scheme is
sensitive to vehicle density because the transmission between the RMR and FMR is wireless.
Fig. 16(c) illustrates the impact of hop count of IP passing to message overhead. As the hop count
increases, the message overhead also increases. The Bus scheme performs better than the Virtual
Bus scheme. But the difference is minor. Fig. 16(d) illustrates the impact of the length of virtual bus
(hops) to message overhead. As the length of virtual bus (hops) increases, the message overhead
also increases.

5.5. Throughput
Fig. 17 shows the throughput of the NEMO, FNEMO, Bus and Virtual Bus schemes. The throughput
of the Virtual Bus scheme is the highest, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO schemes.
Fig. 17(a) illustrates the impact of vehicle speed to throughput. As the vehicle speed increases, the
throughput decreases. Both of the Bus and Virtual Bus schemes perform better than the FNEMO and
NEMO scheme because of their lower packet loss rates as mentioned in section 5.2. The throughput
of the Virtual Bus scheme is higher than that of the Bus scheme because the packet loss rate of
the the Virtual Bus scheme is lower than that of the Bus scheme. Similarly, the throughput of the
FNEMO scheme is higher than that of the NEMO scheme because the packet loss rate of the the
FNEMO scheme is lower than that of the NEMO scheme. Fig. 17(b) illustrates the impact of vehicle
density to throughput. As the vehicle density increases, the throughput decreases because higher
vehicle density may incur more congestions and contentions and thus increases the packet loss rate.
The Virtual Bus scheme still performs the best, followed by the Bus, FNEMO, and NEMO schemes.
Fig. 17(c) illustrates the impact of hop count of IP passing to throughput. As the hop count increases,
the throughput decreases because more hop count may bring longer time to pass IP to the target MR
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

31

Figure 16. (a)Message overhead vs. vehicle speed. (b)Message overhead vs. vehicle density.(c)Message
overhead vs. hop count of IP passing (hops). (d) Message overhead vs. length of virtual bus (hops).

and thus increases the packet loss rate. The Virtual Bus scheme still performs better than the Bus
scheme. Fig. 17(d) illustrates the impact of the length of virtual bus (hops) to throughput. As the
length of virtual bus (hops) increases, the throughput decreases.

6. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we have proposed a novel network mobility management protocol for vehicular ad hoc
networks. The mobile router of the cooperative vehicle (CV) can perform pre-handoff procedure,
while any vehicle is entering a new subnet. The IP passing procedure is used to reduce layer 3
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

32

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

Figure 17. (a)Throughput vs. vehicle speed. (b)Throughput vs. vehicle density. (c)Message overhead vs. hop
count of IP passing (hops). (d)Message overhead vs. Length of virtual BUS (hops).

handoff latency. Both of the bus scheme and the virtual bus scheme can acquire IP addresses fast
from a vehicle on the lanes of the same direction or opposite direction. When a vehicle is entering
a new BS, the vehicle will find a mobile router of the cooperative vehicle (MR-CV) to assist it to
get its IP address and perform binding update. Simulation results have shown that our protocol
performs better than the original network mobility basic support protocol and the fast network
mobility protocol in terms of handoff latency, packet loss rate, handoff jitter, and throughput with a
few extra message overhead.
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

33

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was supported by grants NSC-96-2219-E-305-001 and NSC-97-2221-E-305-003-MY3

from the National Science Council of the R.O.C.

REFERENCES

1. CPerkins. IP Mobility support for IPv4. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-3344 2002; .
2. Johnson D, Perkins C, Arkko J. Mobility Support in IPv6. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-3775
2004; .
3. Droms R, Packard H, Volz B, Lemon T, Perkins C, Carney M. Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for IPv6
(DHCPv6). Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-3315 2003; .
4. Droms R. Dynamic host configuration protocol 1997; Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-2131.
5. Droms R, Thubert P. DHCPv6 Prefix Delegation for NEMO draft-droms-nemo-dhcpv6-pd-02.txt ; .
6. Soliman H, Castelluccia C, Malki KE, Bellier L. Hierarchical Mobile IPv6 Mobility Management (HMIPv6).
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-4140 2005; .
7. Devarapalli V, Wakikawa R, Petrescu A, Thubert P. Network Mobility (NEMO) Basic Support Protocol. Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-3963 2005; .
8. Levkowetz H, Vaarala S. Mobile IP Traversal of Network Address Translation (NAT) Devices. Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-3519 2003; .
9. IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless
Access Systems. IEEE Std 802.16-2004 2004; .
10. IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks - Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile Broadband
Wireless Access Systems - Amendment for Physical and Medium Access Control Layers for Combined Fixed and
Mobile Operation in Licensed Bands. IEEE 802.16e/D8-2005 May 2005; .
11. Chen YS, Chiu KL, Wu KL, Juang TY. A Cross-Layer Partner-Assisted Handoff Scheme for Hierarchical Mobile
IPv6 in IEEE 802.16e Systems. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Hong
Kong 2007; :26692674.
12. Arnold T, Lloyd W, Zhao J. IP Address Passing for VANETs. IEEE International Conference on Pervasive
Computing and Communications (PERCOM), Hong Kong 2008; :7079.
13. Santos RA, Edwards A, Edwards RM, Seed NL. Performance evaluation of routing protocols in vehicular ad-hoc
networks. International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol. 1, No. 1/2 2005; :8091.
14. Koodli R, Ed. Fast Handovers for Mobile IPv6. Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), RFC-4068 2005; .
15. Chen YS, Hsiao WH, Chiu KL. Cross-Layer Partner-Based Fast Handoff Mechanism for IEEE 802.11 Wireless
Networks. IEEE International Conference on Vehicular Technology Conference Fall (VTC), Maryland 2007;
c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

34

Y.-C. CHEN OTHER

:14741478.
16. Chen YS, Chiu KL, Hwang RH. SmSCTP: SIP-Based MSCTP Scheme for Session Mobility over WLAN/3G
Heterogeneous Networks. IEEE International Conference on Wireless Communications and Networking
Conference (WCNC), Hong Kong 2007; :33073312.
17. Perera E, Sivaraman V, Seneviratne A. Survey on network mobility support. SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and
Communications Review ,vol.8, no.2 2004; :719.
18. Han YH, Choi J, Hwang SH. Reactive handover optimization in IPv6-based mobile networks. IEEE Journal
Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), vol. 24, no. 9 2006; .
19. Zhong L, Liu F, Wang X, Ji Y. Fast Handover Scheme for Supporting Network Mobility in IEEE 802.16e
BWA System. IEEE International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing
(WiCOM), Shanghai China 2007; :17571760.
20. Lin H, Labiod H. Hybrid Handover Optimization for Multiple Mobile Routers-based Multihomed NEMO
Networks. IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Services (ICPS), Turkey 2007; :136144.
21. Naoe H, Wetterwald M, Bonnet C. IPv6 Soft Handover Applied to Network Mobility over Heterogeneous Access
Networks. IEEE International Conference on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC),
Athens 2007; :15.
22. Tseng YC, Chen JJ, Cheng YL. Design and Implementation of a SIP-Based Mobile and Vehicular Wireless
Network With Push Mechanism. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (VTT), Vol. 56, no.6 2007; :3408
3420.
23. Lee CW, Sun YS, Chen MC. HiMIP-NEMO: Combining Cross-layer Network Mobility Management and
Resource Allocation for Fast QoS-Handovers. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference Spring (VTC), Singapore
May 2008; :22822286.
24. Zhu K, Niyato D, Wang P, Hossain E, Kim DI. Mobility and handoff management in vehicular networks: a survey.
Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing 2011; 11:459476.
25. Munasinghe KS, Jamalipour A. Interworked WiMAX-3G Cellular Data Networks: An Architecture for Mobility
Management and Performance Evaluation. IEEE Transactions on wireless communications 2009; 8(6):18471853.
26. Cespedes S, Shen X, Lazo C. IP Mobility Management for Vehicular Communication Networks: Challenges and
Solutions. IEEE Communications Magazine May 2011; :187194.
27. Bernardos CJ, Gramaglia M, Contreras LM, Calderon M, Soto I. Network-based Localized IP mobility
Management: Proxy Mobile IPv6 and Current Trends in Standardization. Journal of Wireless Mobile Networks,
Ubiquitous Computing, and Dependable Applications 2010; 1:1635.
28. Bernardos CJ. A PMIPv6-based solution for Distributed Mobility Management. Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF), RFC-3344 2011; .
29. Jung WJ, Lee JY, Kim BC. Inter-pMIPv6 mobility management using core-edge separation network.
International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN) 2012; :390393.

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac

NETWORK MOBILITY PROTOCOL FOR VEHICULAR AD HOC NETWORKS

35

30. Lee JH, Ernst T, Chilamkurti N. Performance Analysis of PMIPv6-Based NEtwork MObility for Intelligent
Transportation Systems. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology 2012; 61:7485.
31. Kong KS, Lee WJ. Mobility management for all-IP mobile networks: mobile IPv6 vs. proxy mobile IPv6. IEEE
Wireless Communications 2008; :3645.
32. Yang WH, Wang YC, Tseng YC, Lin BSP. Energy-efficient network selection with mobility pattern awareness in
an integrated WiMAX and WiFi networky. International Journal of Communication Systems 2010; 23:213230.
33. Chiu KL, Chen YS, Hwang RH. Seamless session mobility scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks.
International Journal of Communication Systems 2011; 24:789809.
34. The Network Simulator NS-2., http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/. ; .

c 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Copyright
Prepared using dacauth.cls

Int. J. Commun. Syst. (2010)

DOI: 10.1002/dac