Analysis of WLAN to UMTS Handover

Generally, in UMTS-WLAN overlay networks, when a UE moves from UMTS to WLAN, it can make a choice of handover to WLAN on its own initiative and break off the UMTS connection after finishing the initial WLAN access operations such as an association, a subscriber authentication, etc. Therefore, the UE can seamlessly switch to the new access system and the handover delay is not significant problem. However, when the handover is happened from WLAN to UMTS, the UE is apt to lose the WLAN signal without warning because it can suddenly stray from the WLAN coverage. As the UE cannot communicate with any systems until it accesses to a UMTS system or another WLAN system, the current session in use may be abruptly terminated if the handover is too delayed and hence the handover delay has a great effect on the seamless mobility. This paper represents a UMTS-WLAN overlay network model and describes our developed UMTS-WLAN handover testbed. We show the test results and the analysis of handover delay happened during handover from WLAN to UMTS.