OpenEPC Core Network Mobility Management

OpenEPC Rel. 3 core network mobility management relies on the harmonized usage of GTP and PMIP solutions. The PMIP solution description is available here while the GTP solution is described here.

Along with the IP Mobility Management selection between GTP and PMIP supported in the PDN GW, OpenEPC supports Fraunhofer FOKUS in-house researched and developed extensions to the current 3GPP standard enabling a more efficient mobility management across the different current standardized mobility management solutions. These extensions include:

1. Truly Seamless Handovers - The PDN GW component was extended with an own developed Fraunhofer FOKUS feature which enables truly seamless handovers based on complete make-before-break procedure. The current 3GPP standard version enables only the replacement of the mobility management context during a handover in the PDN GW. Using the Fraunhofer FOKUS feature, the connectivity is maintained to the source access network as long as necessary ensuring a truly seamless data transfer during handovers without requiring buffering or other specific relay mechanisms.

2. Dual Mobility Management - the PDN GW can support a dual mobility management protocol including PMIP and GTP protocol. The PDN GW is able to select the mobility management protocol for the specific subscribers based on the protocol used by the ANGWs during the mobile device attachment. Based on this,

3. eDHCP - the DHCP protocol was modified in this minimal Fraunhofer FOKUS implementation to support only the features required in specific deployments such as the presence of a single DHCP server in an access network was assumed. Compared with the standard DHCP component (which can be used with OpenEPC for specific setups), the eDHCP enables a faster connectivity to the network, therefore enabling an enhanced demonstration of the core network features with reduced limitations included from the access network communication.