An Integrated Location Management Scheme for Seamless Access in B3G Systems

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a rapid growth of wireless communication technology. Among numerous wireless network architectures, the personal communication services (PCS) networks and wireless local area networks (WLAN) have attracted lots of attention. One of the core functionalities in wireless networks is the location service that provides location information for subscriber services, emergency services, and various mobile networks internal operations. In this paper, an integrated location management mechanism is proposed for heterogeneous wireless networks that combine PCS networks and WLAN. Three major functionalities in the integrated location management scheme are the determination of the WLAN connectivity for a mobile terminal, the development of a local area location scheme for WLAN, and the location prediction module for PCS networks. This mechanism not only determines the location of a mobile client more precisely, but also reduces the cost of locating. The performance evaluation is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism for heterogeneous wireless networks.