Integration of authentication and mobility management in third generation and WLAN data networks

The successful deployment of wireless local area networks (WLAN) for high speed data transmission and cellular systems for wide coverage and global roaming has emerged to be a complementary platform for wireless data communications. In order to fully exploit potentials in 3G/WLAN integration, authentication of roaming users crossing different networks, must be coupled with mobility management, which is a challenging, yet not resolved issue. The focus of this paper is on state-of-art solutions to Wi-Fi and cellular networks based on IP infrastructure. Moreover, we introduce a new authentication architecture for fast authentication during inter-networking handoff and large-scale heterogeneous networks. We show that the new architecture can reduce authentication latency significantly and be adaptive to user mobility and traffic. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.