Global roaming management in the next-generation wireless systems

The next-generation (NG) wireless systems are envisioned to integrate the current communication systems into a seamless infrastructure, capable of allowing mobile users (MU) to access a wide range of high bandwidth wireless services. This integration of heterogeneous networks makes it difficult to locate MU as these MU move across networks using different access technologies and protocols. In this context, global roaming management constitutes a challenging problem. This paper presents an efficient approach which facilitates interoperability between heterogeneous networks during global roaming situations. Preliminary results reveal that such an approach significantly improves the performance of the NG wireless systems in terms of generated signaling traffic and response time during the global roaming process.