A comprehensive simulation study of low latency handoffs in mobile IPv4 for VoIP in IEEE 802.11b WLAN

The inexpensive deployment combined with the high bandwidth availability of IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks led to their proliferation. Although WLANs provide the means of portable computing and networking, the transition to full mobility support, despite the significant progress, has not yet achieved. As an effect, minimization of Handoff Delay is the one of the crucial factors and challenges to deliver multimedia services of high quality (i.e. VoIP over WLANs). The aim of this paper is to access and evaluate the impact of mobility protocols in terms of Handoff Delay on VoIP quality. Low Latency Handoffs in Mobile IPv4 has been used since it is the most promising extension of the standard network-layered Mobility Management protocol of Mobile IPv4. According to the performed analysis, this paper presents VoIP Quality (in terms of R-factor) during handoff scenarios for various VoIP codecs using the aforementioned mobility protocol through OPNET simulation. Through simulation, it is shown that the achieved reduction of Handoff Delay can lead to VoIP Quality improvements in terms of service continuity in all-IP Wireless Access Networking environments.