New signaling solution for heterogeneous access networks

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) is an architectural framework suitable for Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC), where users can access multimedia services ubiquitously from any wireless or wired device. Supporting the user mobility and seamless handover across different heterogeneous access networks in IMS environments represents a challenge. The process involves session re-establishment, incurs long signaling delay, and may result in session interruption. In this paper, we propose a new signaling technique to manage session continuity of IMS services, particularly the seamless transfer of multimedia sessions across different heterogeneous access networks. The proposal relies on using existing SIP requests and does not require the addition of new network entities as opposed to the existing approaches. The proposed technique is simulated using OPNET Modeler for different heterogeneous networks including WLAN/WiMAX/LTE and the performance is evaluated for different users mobility speeds.