Integrating 3G cellular and WLAN - a framework approach

WLANs cover small areas and provide limited mobility. 3G cellular systems have well-established quality support, wide coverage, and high mobility. Integrating these two technologies is of interest since it would result in cheaper voice calls and better data rates for the users. This awareness has led to research activities directed towards inter-system and global roaming across these two technologies. The authors propose global mobility management framework to support seamless roaming across heterogeneous wireless networks. In this article are highlighted details on the application of the framework to support roaming across 3G cellular and wireless local area networks (WLAN). The framework has a robust architecture for mobility management for varying user mobility spans, provisioning for QoS mapping and intersystem message translation. Performance of the framework is presented and discussed.