Abstract
In the future, wireless and mobile users will have increased demands for seamless roaming across different types of wireless networks, quality of service guarantees and support of different types of services. This awareness has led to research activities directed towards inter-system and global roaming and can be noticed in the numerous products like multimode handsets, inter-working gateways and some ongoing standards and research work on signaling protocols for inter-system roaming. This article proposes a global mobility management framework. The framework is like an overlay network comprising of Inter-System Interface Control Units IICU to support inter-network communication and control for Location Management. The protocols and functions of this framework will be distributed and exist partly within the wireless networks and partly within the core-network. A hierarchy introduced among the IICUs will accommodate for the varying mobility coverage required by the mobile user. The IICU may be configured to perform various functions depending on its placement in the hierarchy of the framework. This approach aims to optimize across call set up delays, signaling traffic, database processing, handoff facilitation for seamless roaming and QoS mapping and negotiations as the user moves across different wireless networks. It avoids centralized database dependency with its associated single-point bottleneck and failures. We restrict our analysis of the framework to a 2-network and a 3-network roaming scenario. The presentation has been further restricted to cost and delay analysis of the location update and call delivery procedures. We have taken into account the signalling requirements when the mobile user roams across networks with and without an active call.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
A.S. Acampora and M. Naghshineh, An Architecture and methodology for mobile executed handoff in cellular ATM networks, IEEE Journal on Selected areas in Communications 12(8) (1994) 1365–1375.
I.F. Akyildiz, J. McNair, J.S.M. HO et al., Mobility management in next generation wireless systems, Proceedings of the IEEE 87(8) (1999) 1347–1384.
I.F. Akyildiz and W. Wang, A dynamic location management scheme for next generation multi-tier PCS systems, IEEE Transaction on Wireless Communications 1(1) (2002) 178–189.
K.H. Chaing and N. Shenoy, Swap technique for location management in mobile networks, in: Proceedings of the IEEE ICC (2002) New York.
ETSI TS 129 120 V3.0.0, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS); Mobile Applications Part specification for a Gateway Location Register (GLR); stage 3, 3GPP/ETSI 2000 (2000–2003).
V. Garg and J.E. Wilkes, Internetworking and interoperability issues for North American PCS, IEEE Communications Magazine 39 (1996) 94–99.
J.S.M Ho and I.F. Akyildiz, Dynamic hierarchical database architecture for location management in PCS networks, IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking 14(5) (2000) 646–660.
G.P. Pollini, Trends in handover, IEEE Communications Magazine 34(3) (1996) 82–90.
N. Shenoy, Global roaming in next generation wireless networks, in: Proceedings of the CITC3 Rochester, New York (Sept. 19–21 2002).
N. Shenoy, A. Dadej, J. Asenstorfer and P. Alexander, Mobility prediction for optimal handover and connection management in mobile multimedia, in: Proceedings of the Third Asia Pacific Conference in Communication '97 Conference, Sydney (7–10 Dec. 1997) pp. 1236–1240.
H. Soliman, C. Castullccia, K. El-Malki and L. Bellia, Internet Draft on HIMIPv6 (Oct. 2002). http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-mobileip-hmipv6-07.txt
J.Z. Wang, A fully distributed location registration strategy for universal personal communication systems, IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications 11(6) (1993) 850–860.
W. Wang and I.F. Akyildiz, A new signalling protocol for intersystem roaming in next generation wireless systems, IEEE Journal on Selected areas in communications 19(10) (2001) 2040–2052.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Nirmala Shenoy is Associate Professor at the Information Technology department at RIT. She has several years of teaching and research experience while working in Germany, Singapore and Australia before she moved to USA. She is an avid researcher in the wireless networks area and has technically led several wireless network projects to success. She holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Bremen, Germany, Masters in Applied Electronics and Bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering both from Madras University in India. Professor Shenoy is interested in research in the area mobility management and modeling for wireless networks, Quality of service in wireless networks and the Internet.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shenoy, N. A Framework for Seamless Roaming Across Heterogeneous Next Generation Wireless Networks. Wireless Netw 11, 757–774 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-005-3529-2
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-005-3529-2