Consideration of UMTS-WLAN seamless handover

By mutual complemented reason of wide coverage and high data transmission, the integration and handover of SG network and WLAN is regarded as an important function for 3G beyond (B3G) mobile communication systems. The seamless mobility is one of the basic requirements for handover between these heterogeneous networks. In this paper, we present a seamless handover mechanism for UMTS and WLAN within the framework of handover architecture, IP mobility and authentication mechanism. Firstly, we review the 3GPP-specific integration architecture of UMTS and WLAN, WLAN UE-initiated tunnel mechanism, IP mobility and authentication mechanisms of both networks. Then we propose the configuration of mobile IPv6 based UMTS-WLAN overlay network and the security mechanism for reducing the handover delay. Lastly we show the operation of seamless handover in our proposed network model.