Multicast handover agents for fast handover in wireless multicast networks

This Letter addresses the fast handover in wireless multicast networks. The existing multicast handover scheme tends to induce unnecessary data transmissions and large handover delay during handover. We propose a Multicast Handover Agent (MHA), which is used to support fast handover and to reduce unnecessary data transmission. In the proposed scheme, each MHA has a cache to maintain a list of active mobile nodes per multicast group, which is used to support the fast leave. The MHA also performs the fast join with its neighboring MHA during handover. By numerical analysis, it is shown that the proposed MHA scheme can give smaller handover delays compared to the existing multicast handover scheme.