An intermediate gateway to interconnect UMTS and WLAN

A number of wireless network systems (GPRS/UMTS, WIMAX, WLAN) have been deployed during the past few years. To provide seamless roaming between heterogeneous networks becomes more and more important in the future mobile communication systems. The demand for accessing services while on the move, at any place and time, has lead to the current efforts towards integration of heterogeneous wireless networks, in particular Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), as complementary systems. Integration of UMTS and WLAN can be performed at different levels (open coupling, tight coupling and very tight coupling). This paper presents a new approach for integration of these two networks.