An analytical evaluation of mobility management in integrated WLAN-UMTS networks

Abstract

Ensuring uninterrupted service continuity for handoff calls in an all-IP inter-networked heterogeneous environment requires successful session management among participating access networks. As such, a mobility-aware novel interworking architecture is presented in this article that facilitates session management including session establishment and seamless session handoff across different networks. This framework conveniently enables any 3G cellular technology such as the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to interwork with a given Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technology such as the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) network or the Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) under a common signaling platform. This framework exploits the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) as a universal coupling mediator for real-time session negotiation and management. Next, a Queuing Theory based analytical model for evaluating the performance of vertical handoff management between these interworked 3rd Generation (3G) cellular networks and the WLANs is presented. The analysis includes vertical handoff performance measures such as delay, transient packet loss, jitter, and signaling overhead/cost. The latter part of this paper presents some results from OPNET based simulations for the verification of the analytical model and results.