Mobility-driven networks (MDN): from evolution to visions of mobility management

Mobility is nature in the world and has evolved into an inherent feature and a key driving force of the future network, although only treated as one aspect in a specific network when it originated in a cellular system. Confronting emerging communication paradigms such as mobile social networks, mobile cloud computing, Internet-of-Things, and the expectation of ubiquitous and seamless connectivity, the existing mobility management technologies face problems such as function redundancy, system complexity, and inefficiency. In this article we propose Mobility-Driven Network (MDN) as the vision of mobility management under a systematic and unified methodology. The design philosophy of vertical decoupling the mobility entity into service-entity and device-entity, and horizontal decoupling the entity-identity and locator-identifier, are both discussed. The design philosophy is applied in the proposed function reference model and protocol reference model of MDN to abstract the mobility support functions, entities, and principles. Finally, the open issues in MDN are discussed.