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F. Fiddiqui and S. Zeadally+
Department of Computer Science
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48201, U.S.A.
+Department of Computer Science and Information Technology
University of the District of Columbia
Washington, DC 20008, U.S.A.
Future generation wireless networks are expected to support multiple wireless access
technologies, each with different access bandwidth and coverage range. Two of
these technologies include Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and
IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Provision of real time ubiquitous
communication to mobile users, anywhere, anytime through these heterogeneous networks
remains a challenge. This paper proposes an end-to-end mobility management
solution that enables mobile users to maintain seamless connectivity while moving across
such heterogeneous access networks. The continuous network connectivity is obtained
through the use of mobile devices equipped with dual network interfaces and the capability
to switch data transmission between these interfaces depending upon the availability
of the access network. We present and discuss the design of such a dual- mode radio
access device and propose a simple inter-technology handoff technique. We evaluate the
performance of our proposed architecture by conducting experimental simulation tests
using OPNET.
Received December 16, 2005; revised March 2 & May 4, 2006; accepted May 11, 2006.
Communicated by Ten-Hwang Lai.
*This work was supported by grants from Microsoft (Seattle), OPNET (Maryland), and Ixia Corporation
(Calabasas).