Pouya Taaghol

Seamless integration of mobile WiMAX in 3GPP networks

As the wireless industry makes its way to the next generation of mobile systems, it is important to engineer solutions that enable seamless integration of emerging 4G access technologies within the currently deployed and/or evolved 2G/3G infrastructures. In this article we address a specific case of such a seamless integration, that of mobile WiMAX in evolved 3GPP networks. In this context we investigate the architecture and the key procedures that enable this integration, and we also introduce a novel handover mechanism that enables seamless mobility between mobile WiMAX and legacy 3GPP access, such as UTRAN or GERAN. The core characteristic of this novel handover mechanism is that mobile terminals do not need to support simultaneous transmission on both WiMAX and 3GPP accesses; therefore, it mitigates the RF coexistence issues that exist otherwise and improves handover performance. In addition, we provide a brief overview of mobile WiMAX and the evolved 3GPP network technologies, and we set the appropriate background material before presenting our proposed handover mechanism. Our main conclusion is that integrating mobile WiMAX in evolved 3GPP networks is a compelling approach for providing wireless broadband services, and mobility across WiMAX and 3GPP access can become seamless and efficient with no need for mobile terminals to support simultaneous transmission on both types of access.

All-IP network architecture for mobile WiMAX

The mobile broadband wireless industry is in the midst of a significant transition in terms of capabilities and means of delivering multimedia IP services anytime, anywhere. This paper describes the network architecture for mobile WiMAX, a next-generation OFDMA-based broadband wireless technology developed and published by the IEEE as 802.16e-2005. The all-IP mobile network specification is being defined by the Network Working Group (NWG) in the WiMAX Forum. The adoption of all-IP functional architecture tenets and IETF-standardized protocols enables mobile WiMAX to deliver a wider selection of IP services while lowering capital and operational expenditures with a much faster time to market realization. This paper presents some of the inherent technical challenges and proposed solutions in developing the mobile WiMAX network architecture including support for both low-latency applications and non-real-time applications. We offer the details for some of the key functions realized in the network including handover and low-power idle mode operation. A sequel to this paper will address remaining key functions including network discovery and selection, radio resource management, QoS management and security that are integral to the initial network specification and more advanced IP services that will be supported in the next revision of the specification