Roaming Between Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

As existing wireless network, system, and standards evolve to beyond 3G capability, the ability to roam between heterogeneous wireless networks becomes increasingly desirable. However, when attempt is made to achieve the vision of seamless handover between heterogeneous wireless networks, a number of formidable barriers appear due to unreasonable roaming strategy. In this paper, we propose a novel roaming solution which takes into account the call activity rates and moving speed of users, and analyze the impact of the different parameters on the rate of inter-networking handover and the fraction of calls undergoing call setup delay. Theoretic analysis and numeric results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can obtain better performance than traditional roaming strategy, in terms of improving the capability of inter-networking roaming and reducing the signaling cost of handover.