O segmento das comunicações, já há alguns anos, vem passando por significativas transformações exigindo a interação entre ambientes tecnológicos convergentes heterogêneos, com qualidade na continuidade de serviços, para se manter competitivo, pois é este mercado que exige, constantemente, que mais recursos tecnológicos lhe sejam colocados à disposição. O ineditismo da proposta desenvolvida neste trabalho é a elaboração de um modelo para assegurar a continuidade da qualidade de serviço percebida pelo usuário final através de handover (ou handoff) vertical, o que caracteriza-se como uma necessidade de solução global, isto é, o modelo é genérico e independente da tecnologia, o que permite sua adoção em qualquer ambiente de rede existente aproveitando a capilaridade já disponível das redes legadas. É analisada também a situação na qual um usuário final esteja acessando simultaneamente serviços gerenciados por Provedores de Serviço distintos, o que conduz a duas situações possíveis: a) o usuário está acessando serviços distintos contratados a Provedores de Serviço diferentes; b) o usuário está acessando o mesmo serviço contratado a Provedores de Serviço distintos. Nesta última situação pode surgir a necessidade de disparar um processo de handover exigindo a decisão de qual dos Provedores o executará, de acordo com o SPHDA Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. A metodologia adotada para o desenvolvido do modelo foi a RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, por abranger todos os aspectos técnicos e comerciais necessários à sua construção. / The sector of communications, for some years, has undergone significant changes requiring interaction between converging heterogeneous technology environments, with quality and continuity of services to stay competitive, because this market is that requires constantly more technological resources available. The novelty of the proposal developed in this work is the development of a model to ensure the continued quality of service perceived by end users via vertical handover (or handoff), which characterizes itself as a need for a global solution, i.e., the model is generic and technology independent, allowing its adoption in any network environment taking advantage of the capillary already available from legacy networks. It is also analyzed the situation in which an end user is simultaneously accessing services managed by different Service Providers, which leads to two possible situations: a) the user is accessing different services contracted to different Service Providers; b) the user is accessing the same service contracted to different Service Providers. In this last situation may be necessary to trigger a handover process requiring the decision of which the Providers shall execute it in accordance with the SPHDA - Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. The methodology adopted for the model development was the RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, as it includes all technical and commercial aspects necessary for its construction.

O segmento das comunicações, já há alguns anos, vem passando por significativas transformações exigindo a interação entre ambientes tecnológicos convergentes heterogêneos, com qualidade na continuidade de serviços, para se manter competitivo, pois é este mercado que exige, constantemente, que mais recursos tecnológicos lhe sejam colocados à disposição. O ineditismo da proposta desenvolvida neste trabalho é a elaboração de um modelo para assegurar a continuidade da qualidade de serviço percebida pelo usuário final através de handover (ou handoff) vertical, o que caracteriza-se como uma necessidade de solução global, isto é, o modelo é genérico e independente da tecnologia, o que permite sua adoção em qualquer ambiente de rede existente aproveitando a capilaridade já disponível das redes legadas. É analisada também a situação na qual um usuário final esteja acessando simultaneamente serviços gerenciados por Provedores de Serviço distintos, o que conduz a duas situações possíveis: a) o usuário está acessando serviços distintos contratados a Provedores de Serviço diferentes; b) o usuário está acessando o mesmo serviço contratado a Provedores de Serviço distintos. Nesta última situação pode surgir a necessidade de disparar um processo de handover exigindo a decisão de qual dos Provedores o executará, de acordo com o SPHDA Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. A metodologia adotada para o desenvolvido do modelo foi a RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, por abranger todos os aspectos técnicos e comerciais necessários à sua construção. / The sector of communications, for some years, has undergone significant changes requiring interaction between converging heterogeneous technology environments, with quality and continuity of services to stay competitive, because this market is that requires constantly more technological resources available. The novelty of the proposal developed in this work is the development of a model to ensure the continued quality of service perceived by end users via vertical handover (or handoff), which characterizes itself as a need for a global solution, i.e., the model is generic and technology independent, allowing its adoption in any network environment taking advantage of the capillary already available from legacy networks. It is also analyzed the situation in which an end user is simultaneously accessing services managed by different Service Providers, which leads to two possible situations: a) the user is accessing different services contracted to different Service Providers; b) the user is accessing the same service contracted to different Service Providers. In this last situation may be necessary to trigger a handover process requiring the decision of which the Providers shall execute it in accordance with the SPHDA - Service Providers Handover Decision Agreement. The methodology adopted for the model development was the RM-ODP - Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing, as it includes all technical and commercial aspects necessary for its construction.

[pt] A existência de várias tecnologias para acesso a Internet é uma realidade dos nossos dias. Um subconjunto muito importante destas tecnologias, que segue em pleno desenvolvimento, é o das redes sem fio. Diante das alternativas tecnológicas e da demanda crescente por aplicações multimídia, de preferência com conexões do tipo AAA (Anyone Anywhere Anytime), a interoperação entre diferentes redes de acesso sem fio se torna bastante interessante. Seguindo esta tendência, o IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Eletronics Engineers) realizou a especificação de um protocolo que auxilia o processo de handover entre redes de diferentes tecnologias (handover vertical) chamado IEEE 802.21 conhecido também por MIH (Media Independent Handover). Esta dissertação apresenta um estudo sobre aspectos de gerência de mobilidade e do processo de handover vertical entre as tecnologias UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System), WiMax (IEEE 802.16) e WiFi (802.11) através do protocolo IEEE 802.21. Nela, é confeccionada uma proposta teórica de um algoritmo de decisão de handover vertical entre redes sem fio locais e geograficamente distribuídas para uma topologia comumente encontrada atualmente. São realizadas, através do software ns2 (Network Simulator), simulações do handover vertical envolvendo as tecnologias referidas com o suporte do protocolo IEEE 802.21. Ao final, são feitas as análises e conclusões dos resultados obtidos. / [en] A variety of technologies to access the Internet is a reality today. An important subset of these technologies, which follows in full development, is the wireless networks. Given the technological alternatives and increasing demand for multimedia applications, preferably with connections AAA (Anyone Anywhere Anytime), interoperation between different wireless access networks is quite interesting. Following this trend, the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) held a protocol specification that helps the process of handover between networks of different technologies (vertical handover) called IEEE 802.21 also known as MIH (Media Independent Handover). This work presents a study on aspects of mobility management and vertical handover process between UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System), WiMax (IEEE 802.16) and WiFi (802.11) technologies using IEEE 802.21 protocol. In it, there is a theoretical proposal of a decision algorithm for vertical handover between local and geographically distributed wireless networks to a topology commonly found today. Simulations involving vertical handover in these technologies, with the support of the IEEE 802.21 protocol, are performed using the software ns2 (Network Simulator). At the end, analyzes and conclusions of results are made.

Based on the targets outlined by the EU Horizon 2020 (H2020) framework, it is expected that heterogeneous networking will play a crucial role in delivering seamless end-to-end ubiquitous Internet access for users. In due course, the current GSM-Railway (GSM-R) will be deemed unsustainable, as the demand for packet-oriented services continues to increase. Therefore, the opportunity to identify a plausible replacement system conducted in this research study is timely and appropriate. In this research study, a hybrid satellite and terrestrial network for enabling ubiquitous Internet access in a high-speed train environment is investigated. The study focuses on the mobility management aspect of the system, primarily related to the handover management. A proposed handover strategy, employing the RACE II MONET and ITU-T Q.65 design methodology, will be addressed. This includes identifying the functional model (FM) which is then mapped to the functional architecture (FUA), based on the Q.1711 IMT-2000 FM. In addition, the signalling protocols, information flows and message format based on the adopted design methodology will also be specified. The approach is then simulated in OPNET and the findings are then presented and discussed. The opportunity of exploring the prospect of employing neural networks (NN) for handover is also undertaken. This study focuses specifically on the use of pattern classification neural networks to aid in the handover process, which is then simulated in MATLAB. The simulation outcomes demonstrated the effectiveness and appropriateness of the NN algorithm and the competence of the algorithm in facilitating the handover process.

Based on the targets outlined by the EU Horizon 2020 (H2020) framework, it is expected that heterogeneous networking will play a crucial role in delivering seamless end-to-end ubiquitous Internet access for users. In due course, the current GSM-Railway (GSM-R) will be deemed unsustainable, as the demand for packet-oriented services continues to increase. Therefore, the opportunity to identify a plausible replacement system conducted in this research study is timely and appropriate. In this research study, a hybrid satellite and terrestrial network for enabling ubiquitous Internet access in a high-speed train environment is investigated. The study focuses on the mobility management aspect of the system, primarily related to the handover management. A proposed handover strategy, employing the RACE II MONET and ITU-T Q.65 design methodology, will be addressed. This includes identifying the functional model (FM) which is then mapped to the functional architecture (FUA), based on the Q.1711 IMT-2000 FM. In addition, the signalling protocols, information flows and message format based on the adopted design methodology will also be specified. The approach is then simulated in OPNET and the findings are then presented and discussed. The opportunity of exploring the prospect of employing neural networks (NN) for handover is also undertaken. This study focuses specifically on the use of pattern classification neural networks to aid in the handover process, which is then simulated in MATLAB. The simulation outcomes demonstrated the effectiveness and appropriateness of the NN algorithm and the competence of the algorithm in facilitating the handover process.

Au cours des dernières décennies, le besoin pour des communications multimédia en mobilité est devenu indéniable dans les réseaux de type IP, ainsi la gestion de la mobilité et la continuité de session est depuis plusieurs années un problème de recherche très important aussi bien pour le milieu académique qu’industriel. Comme l'hétérogénéité des réseaux d’accès est en perpétuelle évolution, l'intégration des différents types de réseaux sans fil au niveau de la couche IP est devenue un domaine de recherche difficile et inévitable. L'un des problèmes les plus importants liés à l'exécution de la gestion de la mobilité concerne le fait que la couche d'application souffre de la modification d'adresses IP au cours du mouvement du nœud mobile alors que celle-ci construit sa session sur la base de l’adresse IP de connexion au réseau. Une nouvelle approche d'amélioration de la prise en charge de la mobilité propose de séparer l'identification de session et l'identification de l’emplacement ou l’attachement au réseau. Donc, par la séparation de ces deux concepts, les sessions ne sont pas identifiés par les adresses IP qui elles sont dynamiques puisque la mobilité dans le réseau impose le changement d’adresse IP, mais les nouveaux identificateurs uniques qui définissent un nœud et qui ne change pas à cause de la mobilité ce qui offrirait une stabilité pour le niveau applicatif. Selon ces concepts, Host Identity Protocol (HIP) est l'une des solutions dominantes en recherches qui est proposé par l'IETF et l’IRTF. Dans cette thèse, le protocole HIP est principalement examiné et de nouvelles améliorations de la mobilité sur la base de ce protocole ont été conçues et mises en place / Over the last decades, with rapid and tremendous growth of IP networks in mobile and wireless environments, mobility management and session continuity has become a more important issue. As the heterogeneity increases in network environments and gradual spread of Internet of Things wave, the integration of different types of wireless networks in the IP layer became a challenging and inevitable research area. One of the most important issues related to mobility management is related to the fact that the application layer suffers from the changing of IP addresses during the movement of the mobile node. It is expected the network layer and above layers to be aware of movement of mobile nodes. New wave in the improvement ideas on this concept is separating the session identification and the location identification. This avoids the applications to suffer when the IP address changes during the mobility. This new approach needs to introduce a new layer in the TCP/IP protocol stack, on top of the IP layer that will handle the new identifiers correspondent with the current IP address or new complete architecture designs which are inheriting locator/identifier separation idea. According to these concepts, Host Identity Protocol (HIP) is one of the dominant and prominent researches that is proposed by IETF and IRTF. This protocol proposes to solve the locator/identifier split problem by also including the security support. In this thesis, predominantly HIP protocol is examined and new mobility enhancements based on this protocol have been designed and introduced