Seamless integration of mobile WiMAX in 3GPP networks

As the wireless industry makes its way to the next generation of mobile systems, it is important to engineer solutions that enable seamless integration of emerging 4G access technologies within the currently deployed and/or evolved 2G/3G infrastructures. In this article we address a specific case of such a seamless integration, that of mobile WiMAX in evolved 3GPP networks. In this context we investigate the architecture and the key procedures that enable this integration, and we also introduce a novel handover mechanism that enables seamless mobility between mobile WiMAX and legacy 3GPP access, such as UTRAN or GERAN. The core characteristic of this novel handover mechanism is that mobile terminals do not need to support simultaneous transmission on both WiMAX and 3GPP accesses; therefore, it mitigates the RF coexistence issues that exist otherwise and improves handover performance. In addition, we provide a brief overview of mobile WiMAX and the evolved 3GPP network technologies, and we set the appropriate background material before presenting our proposed handover mechanism. Our main conclusion is that integrating mobile WiMAX in evolved 3GPP networks is a compelling approach for providing wireless broadband services, and mobility across WiMAX and 3GPP access can become seamless and efficient with no need for mobile terminals to support simultaneous transmission on both types of access.