A software-defined networking-based load-balanced handover control scheme for distributed mobility management in vehicular communication

Distributed Mobility Management (DMM) for vehicular communication networks was introduced to mitigate these issues of high-mobility scenarios, but load balancing and latency problems are still encountered. This paper proposes SDN-LB-DMM, a load-balanced handover control scheme for DMM leveraging Software-Defined Networking (SDN) to address these limitations. The proposed approach integrates a unified cost matrix that combines Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and access point (AP) loading to optimize the assignment of multiple mobile nodes (MNs) to next access points (NAPs) under an SDN controller. The handover decision is formulated as a linear programming model, solved using the Simplex method and refined with the Branch and Bound technique to achieve optimal integer solutions. Simulation results demonstrate that SDN-LB-DMM improves throughput, and reduces latency and packet loss.