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Project WLAN_RP4: WLAN-WWAN Internetworking
Project Objectives
Packet-based WWANs (e.g., GPRS, CDMA2000,
UMTS) provide users with high mobility and ubiquitous coverage but
less throughput. Conversely, WLANs offer high throughput but with
less mobility and limited coverage. Inter-working between WLANs and
WWANs therefore serves as one way to overcome their respective limitations
and provide broadband mobile public access to the Internet and enterprise
intranets. However, this inter-working raises the issues of managing
roaming and security in the integrated WLANs-WWAN wireless network.
We plan to propose network architectures and strategies that will
allow WLANs to inter-work with WWAN. We shall study and understand
the impact of WLANs on WWANs in terms of processing (i.e., signaling
and real-time) requirements to support subscriber management, roaming
and mobility management, billing and security management. Using the
proposed WLAN-WWAN network architecture, we propose to research mechanisms
for making WLANs more secure when they're inter-worked with WWAN.
Further, we seek to investigate how to assure security when an enterprise
user roams from the coverage area of a WLAN island to that of another
via a WWAN. We shall also investigate the capacity mismatch problem
between a WLAN (e.g., 11 Mbps for IEEE802.11b) and WWAN (e.g., 2 Mbps
for UMTS) and study the implications of the capacity mismatch on end-to-end
QoS assurance. We shall conduct performance assessment (via mathematical,
simulation and experimental approaches) of the proposed WWAN-to-WLAN
inter-working strategies and make recommendations on network architecture
and strategies for implementation.
Sponsor(s)
- Nortel Networks
- The University of Calgary
Research Team
- A. O. Fapojuwo - Principal Investigator
Publications
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