Flexible and Aggregated Mobility Management in Integrated Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

The integrated satellite and terrestrial network(ISTN) is considered one of the most promising trend to provide global low-delay high-bandwidth Internet access service. For the mobility issue in ISTN, both of the satellites and terminals are moving. The motion of satellites is continuous, high-speed, global and regular, while the motion of terminals is intermittent, low-speed, local and irregular. The complete different characteristics make the classical methods based on the passive reaction of motion terminals ineffective in ISTN. The dealing with the motion of satellites and the motion of terminals are two indispensable terms in ISTN mobility management. Thus, filling the blank of dealing satellite motion is urgently needed. This paper demonstrates one solution integrated with Mobile IP for IP mobility support in ISTN. The flexible agent and aggregated handover are two essential novel points in our method. Flexible agent aims at relaxing the burden of fixed home satellite which moves faraway, relaying the home agent like functionality to a closer satellite in a flexible manner. Aggregated handover do the pre-handover together for users under the same satellite, which is in view of the regularity of passive motion caused by the satellite mobility. Evaluations are conducted to proof the necessity of supplementing the ability to handle the network motion in ISTN.