Seamless Handoff in Community Based and Location Aware Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

摘要

One of the challenges of mobile computing lies within the provision of ubiquitous location-based services over heterogeneous networks. In this work, we propose a community-based signaling architecture for WLAN access network discovery, selection and seamless registration. We combine Internet-based WLAN community information and advances in Location Enabling Servers together with Mobile IP-based roaming client capabilities to provide a solution on how to tackle the problem of WLAN access network selection and (pre-) registration. We exemplify the problem of pre- and post-registration issues with Mobile IP and show how cellular networks (GPRS) can be used as a seamless signaling plane.