Design and analysis of UMTS-WLAN interoperability and service continuity using the SIP protocol

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a reliable construction of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications systems (UMTS) interoperating system. The proposed system shall provide high data rates alongside a significant coverage area. It is known that WLAN makes available high data rates within a very restricted coverage. On the other hand UMTS provides comparatively extended coverage with low data rates. Prior papers planned to integrate WLAN with UMTS to get the best of both systems. Accordingly several types of integration solutions have been evaluated upon success of integration between the 3G and the IEEE 802.11a systems. This approach is especially pragmatic in shadow of the fact that the evolved UMTS system fielding had been delayed due to economic factors. To accomplish an inclusive handover between both technologies this work made use of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as signaling protocol and the Mobile IP which is the standard communications protocol to allow mobile device users to move from one network to another as a handover protocol. This approach is shown to be useful given that no major alterations in the Node Bs are required. Conceptual and practical comparisons showed that the use of mobile Stream Control Transmission Protocol (mSCTP) as transport layer protocol is considered the best approach for achieving interoperability between UMTS and WLAN. On the physical layer MPLS has been used to achieve load balancing and protection from congestions. We deployed different integration solutions for ensuring service continuity across different radio technologies that provide high-quality of service. Performance tests for different application traffic types and distributions have been conducted for both HTTP and Multimedia streaming.