26 Int. J. Internet Protocol Technology, Vol. 7, No.

1, 2012
Copyright 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff
scheme in wireless mesh networks
Neeraj Kumar*
Department of Computer Science and Engineering,
Thapar University,
Patiala, Punjab 147004, India
E-mail: neeraj.kumar@thapar.edu
*Corresponding author
Naveen Chilamkurti
Department of Computer Science and Computer Engineering,
Latrobe University,
Melbourne, Australia
E-mail: n.chilamkurti@latrobe.edu.au
Abstract: Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have emerged as a leading technology for providing
various cost effective services to the end users in recent times. In this paper, we propose a new
agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff (AMLFH) scheme in WMNs. As mesh
clients (MCs) cross different boundaries, the respective agent in that domain calculates the load
on mesh gateways (MGs) and guides the incoming MCs to the suitable MGs for handoff. This
mechanism reduces the handoff latency. Agents exchange the gateway load index (GLI) and
handoff latency values (HLV) in their respective regions before starting the handoff procedure.
The performance of the proposed AMLFH scheme is evaluated by extensive simulation using
various metrics. The results obtained show that the proposed scheme is quite effective than the
existing schemes with respect to the metrics defined above
Keywords: wireless mesh networks; WMNs; handoff latency; agents; load.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kumar, N. and Chilamkurti, N. (2012)
Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks, Int. J.
Internet Protocol Technology, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.2638.
Biographical notes: Neeraj Kumar received his PhD in CSE from Shri Mata Vaishno Devi
University, Katra, India and MTech in CSE from Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra, Haryana.
He has more than ten years of experience in teaching and research in the area of theoretical
computer science and mobile computing addressing the issues such as routing, security, QoS,
optimisation, cache consistency and management, handoff mechanisms and learning algorithms.
He has more than 30 publications in reputed peer reviewed journals and conferences including
IEEE, Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Inderscience. He is a reviewer of many
international journals of repute. He has edited/editing special issue of more than five journals of
repute.
Naveen Chilamkurti is currently working as a Senior Lecturer at Department of Computer
Science and Computer Engineering, La Trobe University, Australia. He received his PhD from
La Trobe University. He is also the Inaugural Editor-in-Chief for International Journal of
Wireless Networks and Broadband Technologies launched in July 2011. He has published about
105 journal and conference papers. His current research areas include intelligent transport
systems (ITS), wireless multimedia, wireless sensor networks, vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to
vehicle communications, health informatics, mobile communications, WiMAX, mobile security,
mobile handover, and RFID. He currently serves on editorial boards on several international
journals. He is a senior member of IEEE. He is also an Associate Editor for Wiley IJCS, SCN,
Inderscience JETWI, and IJIPT.
This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled A fast handoff scheme in
wireless mesh networks using agent technology presented at Australasian Telecommunication
Networks and Applications Conference 2011 (ATNAC 2011), Melbourne, Australia, 911
November 2011.

Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 27
1 Introduction
An increase in internet users has led to the development of
applications which can run in heterogeneous environments
and provide the interrupted access to the end users at any
time. These services may be located at some centralised
server or they may be at some distributed sites. To access
these services, different types of networks are used which
may be wired or wireless. In this direction, special types of
networks are emerging as a new powerful technology called
as wireless mesh networks (WMNs). These networks are a
special type of network having multiple hops and are
self-configured, self-healing and cost effective, greater
coverage, low up-front costs and ease of maintenance and
deployment (Akyildiz et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2006;
Subramanian et al., 2008; Kumar et al., 2011). WMNs
consist of mesh clients (MCs)/nodes, mesh routers (MRs),
and mesh gateways (MGs) in which MRs provide
connectivity to a set of MCs and MGs provide connectivity
to the internet as shown in Figure 1. MCs may act as both
relays, forwarding traffic to or from other MCs, or
providing localised connectivity to mobile or pervasive
wireless devices, such as laptops, desktops and other MCs
(Akyildiz et al., 2005). Figure 1 is a three tier architecture in
which bottom layer consists of MCs, the middle layer forms
the mesh backbone in which various routers and associated
links exist while at the top layer MGs exist which is
connected to the internet directly to provide the un
interrupted services to the end users. The MCs may reside in
different domains and share the valuable information with
each other during mobility.
The MCs in WMNs can roam in different network
domains to access the services provided by the underlying
network which provides seamless connectivity to all its
clients. A WMN forms a wireless backbone which is
integrated with the internet using MGs which act as the
internet attachment point for MRs. The wireless link
capacity of MGs could be a bottleneck in a WMN as the
MCs roam in different domains to access a particular
service since the traffic from the MCs in the WMN is
directed between the MRs and the internet (Xie et al., 2008).
Hence for efficient use of the services in WMNs, a handoff
mechanism is required as the MCs enter into different
domain. A handoff is a mechanism in which MCs move
from one network domain to another network domain. It can
be classified into two broad categories as: homogeneous and
heterogeneous. In case of homogeneous handoff an
uninterrupted service is provided to the end users whenever
MCs move between different domains (Chen et al., 2004).
In case of heterogeneous handoff, three processes are
described namely as: handoff initiation, handoff decision
and handoff execution (Kassar et al., 2008). The key phase
to all these three processes is the hand-off decision phase in
which MCs have to take a decision when and how to take
the handoff be selecting the suitable access networks.
Moreover, as WMNs is mainly used for internet
applications, so handoff mechanism is very important issue
for monitoring mobility management for roaming MCs in
WMNs to provide end to end quality of service (QoS)
(Buddhikot et al., 2005; Navda et al., 2005; Amir et al.,
2006; Xie and Wang, 2008; Zhao and Xie, 2011).
Figure 1 Three tier architecture of WMN (see online version for colours)




28 N. Kumar and N. Chilamkurti
In this modern era, people want to use the services such a
multimedia movies and songs, voice over IP (VoIP), video
on demand, etc., from anywhere. But all these applications
have stringent QoS requirements in terms of network
latency and packet data rate. As the wireless network has
limited range in a particular region and it suffers packet loss
due to various factors such as interference, poor signal, and
capacity of wireless channel (Subramanian et al., 2008;
Kumar et al., 2011), hence a novel handoff mechanism is
required whenever MCs cross the boundaries in different
network regions. Although there exists many solutions for
handoff mechanism in WMNs such as Chen et al. (2004),
Kassar et al. (2008), Buddhikot et al. (2005), Amir et al.
(2006) and Zhao and Xie (2011), but none of the existing
solutions have considered mobility and load of the access
points (APs) providing the services to MCs except Xie et al.
(2008) and Xie and Wang (2008). Hence keeping in view of
al these factors, in this paper we propose a new agent
assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff (AMLFH)
scheme in WMNs. In the proposed scheme, different agents
are deployed at the APs in the respective regions. These
agents communicate with each other and also keep track of
load on that AP. As soon as MC changes its domain and
requires a handoff, it passes the message for handoff to all
the agents. The agents check their respective load and
respond back the message to MC. The MC chooses the
agent having minimum load for handoff. Moreover, the
agent also keeps track of mobility of MC in different
domains. This procedure reduces the handoff latency and
packet loss during handoff which results an increase in the
throughout and performance of the overall system.
The rest of the paper is organised as follows. Section 2
describes the background and related work. Section 3
describes the system model and problem formulation.
The proposed AMLFH scheme is described in Section 4.
Section 5 presents the simulation environment with results
and discussions. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.
2 Background and related work
The switching of MCs from one domain to another is called
as handoff mechanism. During the handoff across different
domains, the handoff latency caused by load balancing and
mobility are the two key factors to be considered. Both of
these two factors affect the overall performance of any
handoff decision. The handoff latency should be minimised
especially for real time delay sensitive applications such as
VoIP, video on demand, etc. Over the years, a number of
solutions have been proposed in this field keeping in view
of handoff latency due to load balancing and mobility of the
MCs. These are broadly classified into following two
categories.
2.1 handoff mechanisms
Shin et al. (2004) have improved the latency of 802.11
handoff using neighbour graphs. The authors have described
a novel and efficient discovery method using neighbour and
non overlap graphs. The proposed scheme reduces the total
time spent in waiting for accessing a channel for handoff
mechanism. Jooris et al. (2007) have proposed the use of a
virtual AP with which a mobile station is constantly
connected, to enable a fast handoff through cooperation
from both APs and station. Huang et al. (2006) propose
several architectures for better handoff performance base on
802.11-based protocols. Hasswa et al. (2005) have proposed
a vertical handoff function for taking handoff decisions in
wireless networks. The authors have discussed various
factors and metrics which are key factors in taking the
handoff decisions. Based upon these factors and metrics,
they have defined a vertical handoff decision function
(VHDF) which assign weights to different network factors
such as QoS, power requirements, mobility, load balancing,
etc. Onel at al. (2004) have proposed a multi criteria
handoff decision scheme for the next generation
communication systems. They have proposed a novel fuzzy
logic-based handoff decision algorithm for the mobile
communications systems. They have used a handoff
decision metrics RSSI which is the ratio of the used
capacity to the total capacity for the APs. They have also
compared their algorithm with the received signal strength
indicator (RSSI)-based handoff decision algorithm as well.
Ezzouhairi et al. (2008) have proposed a fuzzy decision
making strategy for vertical handoff mechanism. The author
presents a review on the proposed vertical handoff
management, and focuses on the decision making
algorithms in vertical handoff. McNair and Zhu (2004) have
proposed a vertical handoff mechanism for fourth
generation multi network environment. Authors present a
tutorial on the design and performance issues for vertical
handoff in multi-network fourth generation environment.
Nkansah-Gyekye and Agbinya (2006) have proposed a
vertical handoff mechanism for wireless LAN. The authors
give a fuzzy logic-based vertical handoff scheme involving
some key parameters and the solution of the wireless
network selection problem using a fuzzy multiple attribute
decision making (FMADM) algorithm. Ceken et al. (2010)
have proposed an interference aware vertical handoff
decision algorithm for QoS support in heterogeneous
wireless networks. The authors have proposed a fuzzy
logic-based handoff decision algorithm for wireless
heterogeneous networks. The parameters; data rate RSSI,
and mobile speed are considered as inputs of the proposed
fuzzy-based system in order to decide handoff initialisation
process and select the best candidate AP around a smart
mobile terminal. The proposed method takes interference
power, which is referred to as interference rate, as another
input to the decision process. Shi et al. (2010) have
proposed a seamless handoff scheme in Wi-Fi and
Wi-MAX heterogeneous networks. They have proposed a
horizontal handoff scheme that reduces the horizontal
handoff latency based on the location and movement pattern
of a mobile node (MN). Also a vertical handoff scheme for
providing seamless services between Wi-Fi and WiMAX
networks is also presented. Xu et al. (2010) have proposed a
faster and smoother handoff in AP-dense 802.11-based
Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 29
wireless networks. The authors focus on improving the AP
scan process, which is a bottleneck to handoffs mechanism
and valuated critical handoff parameters through extensive
analysis of the acquired data. Chen et al. (2011b) have
proposed a cross layer protocol for mobility and handoff in
LTE networks. Authors have present a cross-layer protocol
of spectrum mobility (layer-2) and handover (layer-3) in
cognitive LTE networks by considering the Poisson
distribution model of spectrum resources. A cross-layer
handoff protocol with the minimum expected transmission
time is developed in cognitive LTE networks. Liu et al.
(2011) have proposed a bidding model and cooperative
game-based vertical handoff decision algorithm. The
authors have formulated a multi-tenderee bidding model
among heterogeneous access networks as a cooperative
game process to seek for larger total payoff. Then, they
have proposed algorithm to evaluate the network utility and
standard deviation through simulation, and show that it is
effective to achieve the load balancing and meet the QoS
requirements of various applications using the proposed
model.
2.2 Mobility management
Also there are many research proposals regarding the
mobility in WMNs. Zhang et al. (2010) have proposed a
hybrid routing protocol for mobility management in
WMNs. The proposal consists of mobility management
scheme for both link layer and network layer routing. Both
intra-domain and inter domain mobility management have
been designed to support seamless roaming in Wi-Fi-based
WMNs. Wang et al. (2007) have proposed Ant-based
solution which involves a network-based intra-domain fast
handoff scheme. When a MC begins handoff, the new router
sends a location update message to the location server. The
former router sets up a temporary tunnel with the new
router, and forwards the buffered packets. This former
router then informs the correspondent nodes router to set
up a data path with the new router for the MC. Huang et al.
(2007) have proposed the hierarchically structured mesh
mobility management scheme. In this proposal, three types
of MRs are considered namely as gateways, superior
routers, and access routers. When a handoff is activated, the
prior router adds a temporary routing entry to forward the
packets to the new router. Then, the location information of
the MC is updated at the superior router. Navda et al. (2005)
have proposed a cross-layer mobility management scheme
called as iMesh. Every router in the mesh network has a
routing table containing the paths to all MCs. Before
handoff, a MC searches for new router candidates in the link
layer. It broadcasts a probe request message to all routers in
its vicinity. Upon receiving the probe response messages,
the MC selects the router providing the best link quality.
Ren et al. (2007) have proposed mesh networks with
mobility (MEMO) management which adopts a cross-layer
mobility management solution. The IP address of a MC is
assigned by a simple hash function, and it remains within
the domain during client roaming. When a MC decides to
change its router, the original router notifies the
correspondent nodes router to initiate route discovery for
the MC. Langar et al. (2009) have proposed mobility aware
clustering algorithm with interference constraints in WMNs.
The authors have proposed a new metric for clustering
called as INX to improve the network throughput.
Chen et al. (2011a) have proposed call admission control
(CAC) and resource management by integrating SIP and
QoS mechanisms for IEEE 802.11 e. The proposed resource
management scheme can dynamically adjust the resource
distribution among existing calls by controlling their
supporting codecs and packetisation intervals. In this way, a
multi-grade QoS is achieved with decreased blocking rate
for new calls and less dropping rate for handoff calls in the
proposed scheme.
3 System model
Consider a WMN as consisting of MCs, MRs, and MGs.
Each MR contains certain fixed number of radio interfaces.
Let a WMN is represented by G = (V, E), where
V = {v
1
, v
2
, , v
n
} is the set of MRs and E = {e
1
, e
2
, , e
n
}
is the set of edges/communication links in the network. MC
can go from one network domain to another. Figure 2
contains four network domains (domain 1, domain 2,
domain 3, domain 4) having APs, MRs which are serving
the MCs in their respective domains. MCs send their
requests to APs to MRs. MRs finally are connected to MGs.
As shown in Figure 2, intra domain handoffs are controlled
by respective MRs while in case of inter domain handoffs,
MGs is the controller. In each case both the mobility and
load on the controller is monitored before taking the
decision of handoff to reduce the handoff latency. In each
domain, one load monitoring agent (LMA) is deployed to
keep track of load and mobility of MCs. Also one call
transfer agent (CLA) is also deployed so as to transfer the
call when the demand for a particular service can not be
satisfied within the local domain. Both these agents are also
communicating with each other to share the information
with each other about the parameters such as load and
mobility of the MCs.





30 N. Kumar and N. Chilamkurti
Figure 2 Network model for fast handoff in different network domains (see online version for colours)


3.1 Problem formulation
Let S = {S
1
, S
2
, , S
n
} are the total number of services
available in each domain and R = {R
1
, R
2
, , R
n
} re the
MCs request received by LMA in a particular time interval.
Let , , are the request arrival, service and inter arrival
time. Then the total load generated by all the requests from
MCs is
1
n
i
i
GLI LBI
=
=

(1)
where LBI
i
, 1 i n is the load balancing index of each MC
request which it generates during migration and arrival from
one network domain to the new network domain where LBI
for each request is defined by the Poisson distribution as
follows:
( )
, 1
R
i
i
i
S
S e
LBI i n
R

= (2)
Define the handoff latency value (HLV) for the incoming
request as
( )
* _
1
1 1
1
*
time stamp
n
i
e
HLV RTT
n

=






=

(3)
where
1

is the mean service time for the request from

MCs, and RTT is the round trip time. It is the sum of
request submitted to the acknowledgement received.
time_stamp is the time during which the request from MCs
is received.
1

is the mean inter arrival time.

Then the objective function can be defined as follow:
1
min
n
i
i
Objective HLV
=
=

(4)
Subject to
min max GLI (5)
Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 31
4 Proposed approach
The proposed handoff scheme is divided in to two parts
depending upon the mobility and type of request received
by the MCs. These two categories are intra domain and inter
domain handoff schemes. Each gateway has agents
deployed to keep track of all the activities happening at his
end. LMA is deployed to continuously check the load on the
gateway. It calculates the value of gateway load index (GLI)
for each incoming request and directed the request to intra
domain or inter-domain handoffs. Both the schemes are
explained in the coming sections:
4.1 Intra domain handoff mechanism
As soon as the MCs request come to the LMA, it will
extract the information and check out if the load on the
gateway lies between minimum and maximum value then
extract the information from the header field of the received
information. If the request can be satisfied within the same
domain then service is provided to MCs otherwise it is
handed over to CTA to locate the suitable service provider
in other domain (inter domain handoff). LMA is the overall
in charge monitoring the progress of handoff in a particular
region. It will receive the clients request for handoff and
handover them to the classifier which classify them
according to their resource requirements. If the resource
requirement is below a particular threshold then the services
will be provide to the demanding MCs with in the same
domain. The sequence of events are shown as below:
Definition: A classifier is a function which maps the
incoming client requests to suitable domain as follows:
: , f R
where R = {R
1
, R
2
, , R
n
}and = {0, 1} depending upon
whether the transfer is intra or inter domain.
4.2 Inter domain handoff mechanism
As shown in Figure 3, LMA transfer the handoff requests
from MCs to the other gateway if the request can not be
satisfied with the local resources. It transfer the request to
CTA and start the timer. CTA replicates the agents and each
is sent to other gateway where they contact the respective
CTA for request satisfaction. During this process there exist
considerable amount of handoff latency. Agents collect the
data and respond back from their source and submit the data
before the time expires. The minimum value of the latency
is selected for the service to be handed off. The complete
procedure to calculate the handoff latency is as follows.
Classifier classifies the clients requests according to
their requirements for resource demands. Then from
equation (3), the value of HLV for initial request can be
calculated as follows:
( )
* _
1
1 1
1
*
time stamp
e
HLV RTT
n

= (6)
where
1
1

is the mean service time for request1 from MCs

and t
1
is the first time stamp for this request. In addition to
this value there is a considerable delay for inter agent
communication in transferring the request from one domain
to another in case of inter domain migration. This will also
depend upon the upward bandwidth available for the
channel to communicate from one domain to another. Hence
equation (6) can be modified as follows for inter domain
migration.
( )
* _
1
1 1
1
*
* _
* _
time stamp
size
C
delay
e
HLV RTT
n
S
time stamp
b
NAC time stamp

=

+


+
(7)
where S
size
is the size of the request and b
C
is the bandwidth
of the channel available for communication and NAC
delay
is
the number of agents communication delay of the network.
Then by taking the derivative of the HLV with respect to
time_stamp will give the combined handoff latency for inter
domain scenario.
Figure 3 Interaction between agents for load sharing for inter
domain handoff mechanism (see online version
for colours)

Hence ( ) 0,
d
HLV
dt
= where t = time_stamp
( )
* _
1
* 0
* _
time stamp
size
delay
C
e
S
RTT NAC
n time stamp b

+ + =



(8)
Equation (8) gives a rough estimation about the handoff
latency during the migration of clients requests from one
domain to another.



32 N. Kumar and N. Chilamkurti
Figure 4 Sequence of activity during handoff mechanism in the proposed scheme
N
N

Start
LMA receive the client s request
Send requests to classifier
((resource_demand) < thr)
Service is granted to clients
Transfer the request to CTA
Y
N
Start the timer with time stamp and
launch CTA to multiple gateways
Calculate GLI for each gateway
Calculate HLV for each gateway
Choose gateway with minimum value of HLV and GLI
(( _ _ ) &&
( ))
receive no reply
time_stamp_expired

Y
Handoff request is accepted
End






Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 33
Algorithm 1 Agent AMLFH algorithm
Input Parameters:
N: Number of agents
Queue_Size: Size of the input queue requests from MCs
LMA: Load monitor agent
CTA: Call transfer agent
GLI: Gateway load index
HLV: handoff latency value
time_stamp: time to send the request for handoff
Output: Fast handoff to MCs
1. MCs moves from one network domain to other network domain
2. If (MCs_enter_new_domain) then
3. Send the request to the nearest MG for service
4. Request is entered into the initial state
5. Request is sent to the gateway agent
6. Gateway agent check the load on the gateway
7. If (min load max) then
8. Receive the requests
9. Send the requests to classifier
10. Check the resource requirement of the request
11. Check the destination of the request by extracting the information from header field
12. If ((Request_resources)) < thr) then
13. Establish the connection in the same gateway and provide the service
14. Else
15. Call Procedure (LMA, CTA, HLV, time_stamp)
16. Procedure (LMA, CTA, HLV, time_stamp)
17. Start the timer with input as time_stamp
18. Launch CTA to multiple gateways
19. LMA on respective gateway accepts the request from CTA
20. Calculate the GLI on each gateway using equations (1) and (2) above
21 Calculate HLV value using equation (3) above
22. Request for the handoff is sent to the gateway having minimum value of GLI,
23. and HLV
24. Wait for the reply from the agent to which request is sent
25. If ((Receive_no_reply)) && (time_stamp_expired)) then
26. Drop the handoff request
27. Else
28. Handoff Request is transferred to the gateway from which acknowledgement is
29. received
30. End Procedure











34 N. Kumar and N. Chilamkurti
5 Results and discussions
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme,
we have evaluated the proposed scheme in various
environments with varying nobilities and load conditions.
Various parameters are chosen to show the effectiveness of
the proposed scheme under simulation environment.
Following simulation environment are set up in the
proposed scheme:
5.1 Simulation environment
We have studied the impact of the proposed AMLFH
mechanism in WMNs by simulation using ns-2 (The
Network Simulator NS-2, http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/) in
various scenarios. In the simulation study, we have
considered the network of 512 nodes randomly placed in a
1,000 1,000 square metre area. Moreover, each MR is
equipped with two interfaces: one is used for transmission
and other is used for reception. We have compared the
performance of the proposed scheme with Seamless
handover in IPv6 (Oh et al., 2009), FHMIPv6 (Jung et al.,
2005) and NDPR (Shen et al., 2005). The topology of the
underlying network chosen is the grid topology as shown in
Figure 5 in which a 16 8 topology grid with gateway is
placed in the upper left corner and MRs in the
corresponding square opposite corner, i.e., one gateway is
deployed for 16 8 grid which may also sometime act as
MR . We have considered four such grids each having 128
nodes in the network covering a total area of 1,000 1,000
square metre having 512 nodes which includes MCs, MRs,
and MGs. We have considered 20 simulation iterations with
each iteration is of 120 sec. The parameters chosen for
evaluation of the proposed scheme are: handoff latency,
packet loss, throughput, and end-to-end delay.
Figure 5 Network topology used in the proposed scheme

5.2 Discussion on results obtained
5.2.1 Impact on handoff latency
Figure 6 shows the impact of the proposed scheme on
handoff latency. As shown in figure the proposed scheme
has lowest handoff latency in comparison to all the other
schemes. With an increase in the speed of MCs, the handoff
latency also increases, but the proposed scheme has least
increase in handoff latency than the other schemes. This is
due to the fact that in the proposed scheme, agent receives
the incoming request to transfer to the suitable MGs
depending upon the value of LBI. It transfers the request for
handoff to the classifier which classifies the incoming
traffic to intra or inter domain region. For inter domain
transfer, the calculation of HLV is done which will estimate
the exact value of this parameter. The advantage of using
the agent is its adaption to the environment and replicates
itself to move multiple locations from the source and submit
its result after return. This shows the effectiveness of the
proposed scheme compared to other schemes of its category
as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6 Impact of the proposed scheme on handoff latency
(see online version for colours)
MCs Speed (m/sec.)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
H
a
n
o
f
f

L
a
t
e
n
c
y

(
s
e
c
.
)
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
1.4
1.6
1.8
Proposed
Seamless hanover in IPv6
NDPR
FHMIPv6

5.2.2 Impact on packet loss rate
Figure 7 shows the impact of the proposed scheme on
packet loss rate. As shown in figure with an increase in the
speed of MCs, packet loss rate also increased. But this
packet loss rate is minimum in the proposed scheme as
compared to other schemes of its category. The packet loss
in the proposed scheme is less due to the use of agents.
Agents replicates themselves from their source and submit
the results from their launcher and adaptive to take the
decision at their own if some fault occurs. This mechanism
reduces the delay and packet loss in the process and hence
there is an increase in packet transfer as shown in Figure 7.
This shows the effectiveness of the proposed scheme
compared to other schemes.




Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 35
Figure 7 Impact of the proposed scheme on packet loss rate
(see online version for colours)
MCs Speed (m/sec.)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
P
a
c
k
e
t

L
o
s
s

R
a
t
e
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
Proposed
Seamless hanover in IPv6
NDPR
FHMIPv6

5.2.3 Impact on throughput
Figure 8 shows the impact on throughput of the proposed
scheme with varying the data size and number of users. As
shown in figure, with an increase in data size and number of
users, throughput decreases in all the schemes. But the
decrease in the proposed scheme is less compared to other
schemes of its category. This is due to the fact that with an
increase in size of the data and number of users there is an
increase of the load on the network, but this load is
controlled by the LMA agent in the proposed scheme. LMA
agent transfers the incoming requests to the classifier for
intra and inters domain migrations. The values of LBI and
HLV are also calculated separately to control the multiple
incoming requests from different clients having variable
data size requests. Based upon the size of the data, the
requests are transferred to their final destination. This shows
the effectiveness of the proposed scheme compared to other
schemes of its category.
5.2.4 Impact on end-to-end delay
Figure 9 shows the impact of the proposed scheme on
end-to-end delay with varying data size and number of
users. As shown in Figure 9, with an increase in data size
and number of users, the end-to-end delay increases in all
schemes, but this increase is less in the proposed scheme as
compared with the other schemes of its category. This is due
to the fact that the proposed scheme calculates the
HLV value which takes into the account the mean inter
arrival time, service request and transfer time. These
parameters give good estimation to take a decision about the
call transfer to its final destination. Moreover agent
communication and round trip time is also considered. With
an inclusion of these factors, a rough estimation about the
end-to-end delay can be done which guides the agents to
make an adaptive decision about the handoff transfer. Hence
there is a decrease in this value in the proposed scheme in
comparison to other schemes of its category.

Figure 8 Impact of the proposed scheme on throughput (a) with data size and (b) number of users (see online version for colours)
Data Size (Mb.)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
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Proposed
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(a) (b)



36 N. Kumar and N. Chilamkurti
Figure 9 Impact of the proposed scheme on end-to-end delay (a) with data size and (b) number of users (see online version for colours)
Data Size (Mb)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
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Proposed
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0 2 4 6 8 10 12
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Proposed
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(a) (b)
Figure 10 Impact of the proposed scheme on (a) call blocking rate and (b) call dropping rate (see online version for colours)
MCs Speed(m/sec.)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
C
a
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l

b
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k
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r
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%
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Proposed
Seamless hanover in IPv6
NDPR
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MCs Speed(m/sec.)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
C
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NDPR
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(a) (b)

5.2.5 Impact on call blocking rate and call dropping
rate
Figure 10 shows the impact of the proposed scheme on call
blocking rate and call dropping rate with increase in MCs
speed. As shown in Figure 10, with an increase in MCs
speed, both call blocking rate and call dropping rate
increases. But there is small amount of increase in both the
values in the proposed scheme as compared to other
schemes. This is due to the fact that the proposed scheme
have used agent assisted load balancing and mobility
management scheme which takes care of load on individual
MG and select the best MG using load balancing if the new
incoming request for handoff comes by dividing these
requests in to intra and inter domain regions. Incoming calls
are kept in separate queues depending upon the data size
and available resources and transfer accordingly to their
LBI and HLV values. Hence there is a decrease in call
dropping rate and blocking rate.
5.2.6 Impact on data delivery cost
Figure 11 shows the impact of the proposed scheme on data
delivery cost with data size. The data delivery cost is
Agent assisted mobility and load aware fast handoff scheme in wireless mesh networks 37
calculated by measuring total time taken in the number of
migrations made from one domain to other during handoff
procedure, i.e., if we set the value of time to maximum
value in equation (8),then we get the data delivery cost for
migration from one domain to other. As shown in Figure 11,
the proposed scheme has least data delivery cost than the
other schemes with increased in the size of the data. With an
increase in size of data, the cost in terms of network
resource consumption to deliver that data to the destination
also increases. The data delivery cost is measured in terms
of resource consumption in delivery the data to the total
number of resources in the network. For the sake of
simplicity, we have assumed network bandwidth, and delay
as the total number of network resources available for our
use. There are separate metrics to calculate both these
values before making any decision about the incoming call
transfer. Hence there is a decrease in the value of overhead
and data delivery in the proposed scheme in comparison to
other schemes of its category as shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11 Impact of the proposed scheme on data delivery cost
(see online version for colours)
Data Size(Mb)
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
D
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NDPR
FHMIPv6

6 Conclusions
WMNs have emerged as a new technology to provide the
QoS to various applications such as VoIP, video on demand,
video conferencing, etc. In this paper, we have proposed an
AMLFH scheme in WMNs. An agent is deployed in each
region which will monitor the load and mobility of the MCs
in the region. As soon as the new MC enters in to the
different region from its own registration domain and
demands for resource access, the corresponding agent
guides it when and to whom the handoff should be
delivered. The proposed handoff scheme is divided in to
intra and inter domain regions and a classifier is used for the
same to distinguish among these regions. An inter domain
handoff latency is calculated analytically which gives a
rough estimation about this value and can be used for future
reference. Moreover, GLI is also calculated using load
balancing index which the MCs generates during migration
from one domain to other. The performance of the proposed
scheme is evaluated with respect to the metrics such as
handoff latency, throughput, packet loss rate, end to end
delay, call blocking rata and call dropping rate and data
delivery cost. The results obtained show that the proposed
scheme is quite effective in providing the fast handoff with
respect to the above metrics in comparison to the existing
schemes.
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