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To provide seamless handoffs is an important task of cellular systems. A user of a real-time conversation on a mobile terminal should not notice when moving from one base station to another one. In this paper we address handoff procedures in a scenario where the radio access network is assumed to be IP-based, i.e., IP is used up to the base stations, and the mobile terminal runs a Mobile IP client. First we will motivate the need for differentiation of fast handoffs and seamless handoffs. Then we will survey some previously proposed micro-mobility extensions; thereby we will address the question of what degree of micro-mobility support is needed in the typical structure of a radio access network. The main part of this paper then discusses network-initiated/assisted handoffs in combination with Mobile IP. Here, we aim to bring together ideas of 2G/3G systems and of IP-based approaches.
Recent developments in the standardization of the future Internet (driven by the IETF) and next generation telecom networks (driven by 3GPP) show a convergence towards each other. While it is currently unknown if and to what extend this development leads to a unified technical approach (in terms of signaling, routing, mobility management, charging and security) for both real-time (voice / video) and non-real-time (data) networks, the vision of an All-IP-based communication environment for all classes of traffic is one relevant option to look at.
