Network architecture and fast handover scheme using mobility anchor for UMTS-WLAN interworking

UMTS-WLAN interworking has attracted many research efforts because each of UMTS and WLAN can maximize its capability in service provisioning. Through UMTS-WLAN internetworking, users can be offered the most suitable services according to service area and service provider can reduce network building and maintenance costs. In this paper, we propose a network architecture and fast handover scheme using Mobility Anchor (MA) for UMTS-WLAN interworking. MA is provided at the boundary between GGSN and PDG, under the 3GPP-proposed interworking reference model. Such MA can enable authentication and session establishment before L2 handover of the mobile node, so that seamless and fast vertical handover could be possible. Through computer simulation using OPNET for the performance measurement, the efficiency and validity of the proposed scheme has been examined.