Architecture for interworking data over PCS

This article presents a new approach for wireless service providers to offer data services by taking advantage of the existing infrastructure for voice services and interworking with existing wireline-based data services. The article presents a framework: for interworking between any wireless radio system and any data application on the wireline network. The interworking is provided by a common interworking function that uses a generic interworking control protocol (ICP). Any radio system capable of using the ISDN-based C-interface and implementing ICP can take advantage of the proposed approach. ICP is a generic protocol and can be implemented using different networks. The article considers an ISDN network for the lower-layer transport of ICP. Though the article focuses on interworking with the PSTN and the Internet, the architecture also allows access to other data networks.