Vertical Handoff Characterization for SIP and mSCTP Based UMTS-WLAN Integration Solutions

Abstract

It is desirable to integrate 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) and 802.11 wireless local area networks, especially at hot-spot locations such as hotels and airports. The efficiency of wireless data services can be maximized if the integration provides users with seamless roaming across the two types of networks. Seamless handoff between these two networks to maintain session continuity is a major challenge in WLAN-3G integration. To achieve this goal, integration architectures together with mobility solutions such mobile stream control transmission protocol (mSCTP) and session initiation protocol (SIP) have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we implement through simulations an integration architecture and characterize the vertical handoff delay for both mobility solutions mSCTP and SIP as a function of network parameters. This study finds that mSCTP perform better in terms of handoff delay compared to SIP for the assumptions specified in this paper.