HISNs: Distributed gateways for application-level integration of heterogeneous wireless networks

• Published in: Wireless networks Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 71 - 85
• Main Authors: Lin, Phone, Chang, Huan-Ming, Fang, Yuguang, Cheng, Shin-Ming
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.02.2008; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bottlenecks; Communication; Communications Engineering; Computer Communication Networks; Computer engineering; Computer science; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; Internet; IT in Business; Networks; Public switched telephone network; Studies; Systems integration; Telecommunications systems; Wireless networks; Session mobility; Heterogeneous networks; Personal mobility; Service mobility; Heterogeneous network integration support node (HISN)
• ISSN: 1022-0038; 1572-8196
• DOI: 10.1007/s11276-006-7818-1

Integration of different kinds of wireless networks to provide people seamless and continuous network access services is a major issue in the B3G network. In this paper, we propose and implement a novel Heterogeneous network Integration Support Node design (HISN) and a distributed HISN network architecture for the integration of heterogeneous networks, under which the Session Mobility, Personal Mobility, and Terminal Mobility for mobile users can be maintained through the Session Management mechanism. Thus, the HISN node can serve as an agent for the user to access Internet services independent of underlying communication infrastructure. Our design is transparent to the bearer networks and the deployment of the HISN network does not need to involve the operators of the heterogeneous wireless networks.