MOBILITY AND RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

A NEW METHOD TO SUPPORT UMTS/WLAN VERTICAL HANDOVER USING SCTP

LI MA, FEI YU, AND VICTOR C. M. LEUNG, THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA TEJINDER RANDHAWA, BRITISH COLUMBIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

ABSTRACT
Fixed serve 3.3.3.1

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r1 0

Ro 22

Unlike techniques based on MIP or SIP, the SCTP-based vertical handover scheme does not require the addition of components such as home/foreign agents or SIP server to the existing networks.

This article proposes a new method to facilitate seamless vertical handover between widearea cellular data networks such as UMTS and WLANs using the Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). The multihoming capability and dynamic address configuration extension of SCTP are applied in an UMTS/WLAN overlay architecture to decrease handover delay and improve throughput performance. Unlike techniques based on Mobile IP or Session Initiation Protocol, the SCTP-based vertical handover scheme does not require the addition of components such as home/foreign agents or a SIP server to existing networks. Therefore, the proposed scheme provides a network-independent solution preferred by service providers. Performance evaluations are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

INTRODUCTION
The complementary characteristics of third-generation cellular networks such as the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) make integrating these two technologies attractive [1, 2]. While UMTS networks provide always-on wide-area connectivity with relatively low data rates to users with high mobility, WLANs offer much higher data rates to users with low mobility over smaller areas. Contemporary mobile devices are increasingly equipped with multiple (e.g., UMTS/WLAN) network interfaces, which enable the mobile user to access the Internet using the higher bandwidth offered by a WLAN whenever possible, and using UMTS service otherwise. Since mobile users accessing the Internet via UMTS/WLAN are free to move, an efficient mobility management scheme is crucial in this integration. Mobility management consists of support for roaming, which provides reachability of mobile users, and support for handover (also referred to as handoff in the literature), which provides ongoing connection continuity in spite of movements across and between UMTS and WLANs. Handovers between UMTS and WLANs are commonly referred to as vertical handovers.

This work is based in part on a article presented at IEEE VTCfall, Orlando, FL, Oct. 2003. This work was supported by grants from Telus Mobility and the Advanced Systems Institute of BC, and by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council under grant CRD247855-01.

Many proposals to solve the mobility management problem in heterogeneous wireless networks are found in the literature. Mobile IP (MIP) [3] from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a network layer solution. By inserting a level of indirection into the routing architecture, MIP provides transparent support for host mobility, including the maintenance of active Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connections and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) port bindings. In this scheme, a home agent and a foreign agent are used to bind the home address of a mobile host (MH) to the care-of address at the visited network and provide packet forwarding when the MH is moving between IP subnets. Triangular routing of all incoming packets to the mobile host via the home network can cause additional delays and waste of bandwidth capacity. If the correspondent host has knowledge of where the MH is located, it can send packets directly to the care-of address of the MH, thus enabling route optimization. The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based approach [4] aims to keep mobility support independent of the underlying wireless access technologies and network layer elements. SIP is an application layer protocol. When an MH moves during an active session into a different network, it first receives a new network address, and then sends a new session invitation to the correspondent host. Subsequent data packets are forwarded to the MH using this new address. Although both MIP- and SIP-based approaches can provide some level of vertical handover support between UMTS and WLANs, experiments have shown that it is difficult to maintain the continuity of ongoing data sessions during handover due to the long handover latency [5, 6]. Mobile users may experience quality of service (QoS) degradation or session disruption/termination during vertical handovers if these approaches are used. In this article we introduce a novel transport-layer scheme to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handovers. Unlike techniques based on MIP or SIP, this approach follows the end-to-end principle [7] in the Internet: anything that can be done in the end system should be done there. Since the transport layer is the lowest end-to-end layer in the Internet protocol stack, it is a natural candidate for verti-

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cal handover support. Moreover, in the transport layer approach, no third party other than the endpoints participates in vertical handover, and no modification or addition of network components is required, which makes this approach universally applicable to all present and future network architectures. In addition, user mobility in wireless networks has a significant impact on transport layer performance. A transport layer approach to vertical handover enables the end nodes to adapt the flow and congestion control parameters quickly, thus offering the potential for significant performance enhancements. This approach is used in [8], which proposes a new set of migrate options for TCP to support mobility. However, the approach in [8] requires globally changing the widely deployed TCP, which is very difficult, if not impossible, in practice. A new transport layer protocol, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) [9], has recently been accepted by the IETF as a Request for Comments (RFC), joining TCP and UDP as a general-purpose end-to-end protocol above the IP layer. In this article we apply the multihoming feature and the latest dynamic address reconfiguration (DAR) extension [10] of SCTP, referred to as the mobile extension of SCTP (mSCTP) [11], to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handover. SCTP was previously proposed to support handover over homogeneous wireless networks [5]. However, experimental results in [5] show a long interruption time during an SCTP handover. In this article we apply SCTP to support vertical handover between heterogeneous wireless networks. We consider UMTS/WLAN vertical handover support via two types of SCTP configurations, single-homing asymmetric configuration [12] and dual-homing symmetric configuration [11], and apply SCTP message bundling [13] to reduce handover latency. The performance of these configurations is evaluated by computer simulations. Results show that the proposed scheme can overcome the problem of long interruption time during handover, especially in the dual-homing SCTP configuration. The rest of this article is organized as follows. The next section describes the UMTS/WLAN vertical handover problem. We present an overview of mSCTP. We describe the protocol architecture and procedures to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handover using mSCTP. We then present the simulation results to evaluate the handover latency and throughput performance. Finally, we conclude the article.

Internet server

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I Figure 1. Integrated UMTS/WLAN systems. interworking [1, 2, 14]. Figure 1 shows the architecture for UMTS/WLAN integration. In a tight coupling interworking architecture, a WLAN is connected to an UMTS core network in the same manner as other UMTS radio access networks. The WLAN gateway implements all the UMTS protocols (authentication, mobility management, etc.) required in the UMTS radio access network. In this approach, UMTS and WLAN would use the same authentication, mobility, and billing infrastructures. The main advantage of this solution is that the mechanisms for mobility, QoS, and security in the UMTS core network can be reused directly over the WLAN. However, tightly coupled solutions will be highly specific to the UMTS technology and require extensive access interface standardization of WLANs beyond the existing standards. Moreover, the configuration and design of UMTS network elements, such as the serving General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) support node (SGSN) and gateway GPRS support node (GGSN), have to be modified to sustain the increased traffic from WLANs. In the loose coupling approach, the WLAN gateway does not have any direct connection to UMTS network elements. Instead, it connects to the Internet. WLAN traffic would not go through the UMTS core network. In this approach, UMTS and WLAN can use different mechanisms and protocols to handle authentication, mobility, and billing. Nevertheless, they can share the same subscriber database for functions such as security, billing, and customer manage-

UMTS/WLAN VERTICAL HANDOVER

Since UMTS and WLANs will coexist to offer Internet access to end users, the integration of these networks to allow seamless switchover of services would be desirable from both the operator and end user perspectives. In this section we describe integrated UMTS/WLAN systems and several challenges in this integration, particularly the issue of seamless vertical handover.

INTEGRATED UMTS/WLAN SYSTEMS

There are two different ways to design an integrated UMTS/WLAN network architecture, defined as tight coupling and loose coupling

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OVERVIEW OF MOBILE SCTP

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STREAM CONTROL TRANSMISSION PROTOCOL

SCTP was originally designed as a specialized transport protocol for call control signaling in voice over IP (VoIP) networks and has been specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to carry call signaling traffic in UMTS [15]. Recognizing that other applications could use SCTPs capabilities, the IETF has embraced SCTP as a general-purpose transport layer protocol. Like TCP, SCTP offers a point-to-point connection-oriented reliable delivery service for applications communicating over an IP network. It inherits many TCP functions and at the same time incorporates many attractive new features. The most interesting new features of SCTP are partial reliability and multihoming. Unlike TCP, which provides reliable deliveries, and UDP, which provides unreliable deliveries, SCTP has a partial reliability mechanism, by which it can configure a reliability level. The reliability level defines how persistent an SCTP sender should be in attempting to send a message to the receiver (e.g., never retransmit, retransmit up to a certain time, and retransmit until lifetime expires). The partial reliability mechanism benefits real-time traffic transferred during periods of poor QoS due to path failures or network congestion. One application of partial reliability is the delivery of real-time telephony signaling. Another core feature of SCTP is multihoming, which enables an SCTP session to be established over multiple interfaces identified by multiple IP addresses. SCTP normally sends packets to a destination IP address designated the primary address, but can reroute packets to an alternative secondary IP address if the primary IP address becomes unreachable. Accordingly, the path between two SCTP hosts using the primary address(es) is the primary path, and a path between two SCTP hosts involving a secondary address is a secondary path. Note that two SCTP hosts can have only one primary path, but more than one secondary path. This type of session is defined as an association in SCTP. An SCTP association between two hosts, say, A and B, is defined as {[a set of IP addresses at A] + [Port-A]} + {[a set of IP addresses at B] + [Port-B]}. Any of the IP addresses on either host can be used as a source or destination address in the IP packet. Before data can be exchanged, the two SCTP hosts must exchange the involved IP addresses in the association establishment stage. The multihoming mechanism is originally designed for fault-resilient communications between two SCTP endpoints over wired networks. This powerful feature has been exploited to support IP mobility using SCTP. Specifically, the SCTP DAR extension [10], referred to as mSCTP [11], can provide a simple but powerful framework for mobility support over IP networks.

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I Figure 2. SCTP support of seamless handover. ment as peer IP domains. This scheme allows the independent deployment and traffic engineering of UMTS and WLAN. Network operators and service providers can operate these two networks separately through roaming agreements. It is shown in [2] that loose coupling offers several advantages over tight coupling, such as independent deployment and traffic engineering of UMTS and WLANs.

VERTICAL HANDOVER BETWEEN UMTS AND WLAN

Vertical handover between UMTS and WLAN can be seen as the next evolutionary step from roaming in this integrated environment. Consider, for example, a laptop/handheld that supports both UMTS and WLAN access capabilities. The end user of this mobile device is connected to the Internet via a WLAN at a hot spot. As the user moves out of the coverage of the hot spot, the mobile device detects the failing WLAN coverage and switches the connection to a UMTS network. Similarly, when a mobile user connected to a UMTS network travels to a hot spot, the device detects the coverage of an overlaid WLAN. The end user may want to switch to WLAN access to enjoy the higher bandwidth. Ideally, the end user would not be required to intervene in the vertical handover between these two networks, and the QoS should not be degraded due to this handover. Therefore, the objective of designing a UMTS/WLAN vertical handover scheme is to make handover as seamless (with low latency and negligible loss of data) and efficient as possible. We introduce a new scheme to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handover using mSCTP, which is described in the following sections.

MOBILE SCTP
In the base version of SCTP, the endpoints exchange all the IP addresses before the SCTP association is established, and these IP addresses

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Since no addition or
Applications mSCTP IPv4/IPv6 UMTS layer 2 and layer 1 WLAN layer 2 and layer 1 IPv4/IPv6 Layer 2 and layer 1 Network nodes IPv4/IPv6 Layer 2 and layer 1 Applications mSCTP IPv4/IPv6 Layer 2 and layer 1 Fixed server

modification of network components is required, the proposed scheme has a network architecture that is much simpler than those required by

Mobile client

I Figure 3. Protocol architecture. cannot be changed during the session. However, in the integrated UMTS/WLAN environment, an MH may not have fixed, previously known IP addresses. Therefore, the base version of SCTP cannot be used directly to support UMTS/ WLAN vertical handover. Fortunately, the recently proposed DAR extension [10] for SCTP enables the endpoints to add, delete, or change the IP addresses during an active SCTP association using address configuration (ASCONF) messages. This forms the basis of mSCTP [11], the key address handling features of which are illustrated as follows. Without loss of generality, we use a clientserver model in the example, where a mobile client (MC) communicates with a fixed server (FS) using mSCTP, as shown in Fig. 2. In IP implementations, the outgoing interface of a multihomed host is often determined by the destination IP address. The mapping of outgoing source IP address and destination address is done by a lookup in the host routing table maintained by the operating system. Assume that the MC uses IP address 1.1.1.1 at location A. Traffic between the MC and FS is routed through router 1. When the MC moves from location A to location B, it detects the coverage of router 2 and gets a new IP address, 2.2.2.1. To add this new IP address to the SCTP association, the MC sends an ASCONF(Add IP Address, 2.2.2.1) message to the FS. Note that the traffic is still routed through router 1 since it is the primary choice. During the overlap time, when the signal from router 2 becomes strong enough, the MC sends an ASCONF(Set Primary Address, 2.2.2.1) message to the FS. Router 2 becomes the primary router over which the MCs traffic is routed. The routing tables are changed in the MC and FS accordingly. When the signal from router 1 becomes too weak to support communications, the MC deletes IP address 1.1.1.1 from the association by sending an ASCONF(Delete IP Address, 1.1.1.1) message to the FS. as it is possible for an interface to establish a connection to the Internet via an IP address, the interface can be added into the current association. Particularly, mSCTPs capabilities to add, delete, and change the IP addresses dynamically during an active SCTP association provides an end-to-end UMTS/WLAN vertical handover solution. Since no addition or modification of network components is required, the proposed scheme has a network architecture that is much simpler than those required by network layer or application layer solutions. We describe the protocol architecture and the procedure in the proposed vertical handover scheme in the following subsections.

network-layer or application-layer solutions.

PROTOCOL ARCHITECTURE
Figure 3 shows the simplified protocol architecture of the proposed scheme. Both the MC and FS are assumed to implement mSCTP. In addition, we require both endpoints to implement SCTP message bundling. The MC supports both UMTS and WLAN at the physical and data link layers. There is no additional protocol requirement for other network nodes. To allow access to any FSs over the Internet in general, and recognizing that at the present time these FSs are likely to support TCP rather than mSCTP, the FS in Fig. 3 can in fact be a proxy server that provides mSCTP associations with MCs over UMTS/WLAN while connecting to other FSs via TCP over the Internet.

VERTICAL HANDOVER PROCEDURES

Using the multihoming feature of SCTP, an MC can have two IP addresses during vertical handover, one from the UMTS and the other from the WLAN. Similarly, an FS can also be configured for: Single-homing: The FS provides only one IP address to support handover. Dual-homing: The FS allows more than one (usually two) IP addresses to support handover. Note that almost all servers in the current Internet are configured with only one IP address. Therefore, configuring each server with more than one IP address is not an easy task. This is why the authors of [12] argue that it is natural to consider FS supporting handover with only one IP address as a fixed host should not add new IP addresses dynamically. However, the authors in [11] suggest that a server should use multiple IP addresses to provide the MC with multiple paths in order to fully take advantage of the existence of a second interface at the MC for fault

SUPPORTING UMTS/WLAN VERTICAL HANDOVER USING MSCTP

In this section we introduce a new scheme to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handover using mSCTP. The rationale behind the proposed scheme is that, due to the multihoming feature of mSCTP, from the association point of view it does not matter whether an endpoints network interfaces belong to the same network or not. As long

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Note that almost all servers in the current Internet are configured with only one IP address. Therefore, configuring each server with more than one IP addresses is not an easy task.
WLAN->UMTS Data ASCONF (Delete IP Address, WLAN_IP) ASCONF_ACK UMTS->WLAN MC UMTS_IP MC WLAN_IP Data ASCONF (Add IP Address, WLAN_IP) ASCONF_ACK ASCONF (Set Primary Address, WLAN_IP) ASCONF_ACK Data ASCONF (Set Primary Address, WLAN_IP) ASCONF_ACK FS FS_IP

I Figure 4. The vertical handover procedure (the FS is in a single-homing configuration).

resilience. Which configuration (single-homing or dual-homing) should be used in an FS supporting handover is still an ongoing research topic. In this article the detailed handover procedures of both single-homing and multihoming configurations are presented, and the handover performance of the two configurations are compared. The vertical handover procedures of the single-homing and dual-homing configurations are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. For each of these configurations, the handover procedure has three basic steps: Add IP address Vertical handover triggering Delete IP address Note that UMTS-to-WLAN handover is shown in the upper part, and handover in the reverse direction is in the lower part of each figure. The handover procedures are described as follows. Single-Homing FS In this case, an FS is configured with only one IP address, say, FS_IP. Assume that an MC has been allocated with an IP address, UMTS_IP, in a UMTS cell and using this IP address to communicate with the FS via mSCTP. When the MC moves into a WLAN cell covered by a UMTS cell, it gets a new IP address, WLAN_IP, and starts the add IP address process. The MC informs the FS of its new IP address by sending an ASCONF message to the FS with parameters set to add IP address and WLAN_IP. The vertical handover triggering process allows the MC to trigger a handover based on some decision rules. The UMTS-to-WLAN handover is triggered by the MC sending an ASCONF message with parameters set to set primary address and WLAN_IP. After the MC receives an acknowledgment (ACK) from the FS, the WLAN becomes the primary choice, and the traffic between the MC and the FS is routed

through the WLAN. The WLAN-to-UMTS handover is triggered by the MC sending an ASCONF message with parameters set to set primary address and UMTS_IP. After the MC receives an ACK from the FS, the UMTS becomes the primary choice, and the traffic between the MC and the FS is routed though the UMTS. If the MC loses the signal from the WLAN cell, it starts the delete IP address process. The MC sends an ASCONF message with parameters set to delete IP address and WLAN_IP to request that the FS release the address WLAN_IP from its host routing table. After the MC receives an ACK from the FS, it deletes WLAN_IP from its address list, and WLAN_IP is released from the association. In this configuration, because of the handshake process, the overall handover delay can be calculated as Delayoverall = TASCONF + Thandover, where T ASCONF , the ASCONF and ASCONF_ ACK transmission time, is ASCONF _ Chunk _ Size , 2 Bandwidth + Propagation _ Delay and Thandover is the change-over command delay and buffered data transfer time. Dual-Homing FS In this case the FS is configured with two IP addresses, say, FS_IP_1 and FS_IP_2, as shown in Fig. 5. At the beginning of the procedure, UMTS_IP and FS_IP_1 are the primary IP addresses of the MC and FS, respectively. There are two differences between this procedure and that for a single-homing FS. The first difference is the add/delete IP address processes. In the dualhoming configuration, when the FS responds to the MCs add/delete IP address request with an

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The Vertical Handover

MC UMTS_IP MC UMTS_IP Data ASCONF (Add IP Address, WLAN_IP) ASCONF_ACK bundles with ASCONF (Add IP Address, FS_IP_2) UMTS->WLAN ASCONF_ACK Data Data ASCONF (Delete IP Address, WLAN_IP) WLAN->UMTS ASCONF_ACK bundles with ASCONF (Delete IP Address, FS_IP_2) ASCONF_ACK FS FS_IP_1 FS FS_IP_2

Triggering process allows the MC to trigger a handover based on some decision rules. The UMTS to WLAN handover is triggered by the MC sending an ASCONF message with parameters set to Set Primary Address and WLAN_IP.

I Figure 5. The vertical handover procedure (the FS is in a dual-homing configuration). ACK, the FS bundles an ASCONF to request the MC to add/delete the FSs secondary IP address into/from the association. The MC then sends an ACK to confirm the completion of the add/delete IP address process. The second difference is in the handover triggering process. Since both the MC and FS are in dual-homing configuration, the MC can directly set the FSs secondary address as the primary destination in its host routing table and start to send data on the new link. In this case, the handover delay becomes Delayoverall = Thandover. Since in the dual-homing configuration there is no handshake process in the vertical handover triggering process, the handover delay is smaller than that in the single-homing case. Figures 6 and 7 show the delay performance for vertical handover from UMTS to WLAN and in the reverse direction, respectively. When the FS is in single-homing configuration, the handover delay is the time interval in which the FS receives the first packet on the new primary link and the last packet on the old primary link. According to the simulation results, the UMTSto-WLAN handover delay is 533 ms in Fig. 6a, and WLAN-to-UMTS delay is 513 ms in Fig. 7a. When FS is in dual-homing configuration, the handover delay is the time interval in which the FS receives the same transmission sequence number on both links. These two handover delays are reduced to 234 ms in Fig. 6b and 212 ms in Fig. 7b, respectively. This is because when the FS is in single-homing configuration, the MC sends a set primary address request to trigger a handover, thus increasing the overall delay with a handshake processing time. However, when the FS is in dualhoming configuration, the MC can trigger a handover by directly setting the FSs secondary address; therefore, the handover delays in both directions are reduced significantly. Figure 8 shows the throughput performance for vertical handover in both directions. We can see that the throughput (bits per second) of an FS in a dual-homing configuration is much higher than that of an FS in a single-homing configuration. This is because, besides the delay advantage, a dual-homing FS allows both the MC and FS to operate in a symmetric multihomed configuration. This configuration enables easy distinction of the two paths between the MC and FS, so the redundant path can help provide fault tolerance to data transmission during handover. In the simulations buffered data are sent over both old and new connections when a changeover of primary and secondary paths occurs. In this way, packet loss and retransmis-

SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

In this section we present and discuss the simulation results of the proposed scheme. The objective of the simulations is to evaluate two critical performance metrics, UMTS/WLAN handover delay and overall throughput for each of the two configurations described earlier. We use network simulator ns-2 to perform the simulations and obtain the results reported in this article. We extend the SCTP module in ns-2 so that the multihoming feature can work over wireless links. The IEEE 802.11 WLAN model in ns-2 is used to represent the medium access control (MAC) layer. The bandwidths are set to be 384 kb/s for the UMTS link and 2 Mb/s for the WLAN link. The network propagation delay is set to 100 ms. FTP traffic is started at the MC at time 1 s. The handover triggering process is activated at time 5 s. We examine the impacts of the different FS configurations on the delay and throughput performance.

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600

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I Figure 6. Delay performance of the proposed vertical handover scheme (from UMTS to WLAN) with the FS in a) single-homing; b) dual-homing configuration. sion delay can be avoided. Duplicated packets are dropped by the receiver, and different strategies may be employed by the sender and receiver to adapt flow, congestion, and other QoS control parameters easily and quickly during and after handover. In Fig. 8 we also observe that SCTP readily copes with the sudden change of link bandwidth during a vertical handover. Going from low bandwidth to high bandwidth in a UMTS-to-WLAN handover results in SCTP going into slow start, whereas going in the reverse direction from high-bandwidth WLAN to low-bandwidth UMTS, SCTP congestion avoidance control is activated. been presented for current interest, the proposed method is useful for supporting vertical handover between any heterogeneous wireless networks in general and is not limited to UMTS and WLAN. We have studied different scenarios employing single-homing and dual-homing fixed servers to support handover. Simulation results show that delay and throughput performance can be improved significantly using the dualhoming configuration with message bundling. In the dual-homing configuration, duplicated buffered data transmission over both old and new paths may help the receiver and sender to adapt to a sudden change in link characteristics easily and quickly during and after a vertical handover.

CONCLUSIONS
A new method to support UMTS/WLAN vertical handover using SCTP, more specifically a dynamic address reconfiguration extension called mSCTP, has been proposed in this article. Although UMTS/WLAN vertical handover has

REFERENCES
[1] A. K. Salkintzis, C. Fors, and R. Pazhyannur, WLANGPRS Integration for Next-generation Mobile Data Networks, IEEE Wireless Commun. , vol. 9, no. 5, Oct. 2002. pp. 11224.

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I Figure 7. Delay performance of the proposed vertical handover scheme (from WLAN to UMTS) with the FS in a)single-homing; b) dual-homing configuration.

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9 8 Overall throughput at receiver (b/s) 7

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0 2 (b) 3 4 5 Time (s) 6 7 8

I Figure 8. Throughput performance of the proposed vertical handover scheme; handover a) from UMTS to WLAN; b) from WLAN to UMTS.
[2] M. Buddhikot et al., Integration of 802.11 and Thirdgeneration Wireless Data Networks, Proc. IEEE INFOCOM 03, San Francisco, CA, Apr. 2003. [3] C. E. Perkins, IP Mobility Support, RFC 2002, Oct. 1996. [4] H. Schulzrinne and E. Wedlund, Application-Layer Mobility Using SIP, ACM Mobile Comp. and Commun. Rev., vol. 4, no. 3, July 2000, pp. 4757. [5] W. Xing, H. Karl, and A. Wolisz, M-SCTP: Design and Prototypical Implementation of an End-to-End Mobility Concept, Proc. 5th Intl. Wksp., Berlin, Germany, Oct. 2002. [6] P. A. Pangalos et al., End-to-end SIP based Real Time Application Adaptation During Unplanned Vertical Handovers, Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM 01 , San Antonio, TX, Nov. 2001. [7] J. H. Saltzer, D. P. Reed, and D. D. Clark, End-to-end Arguments in System Design, ACM Trans. Comp. Sys., vol. 2, no. 4, Nov. 1984, pp. 27888. [8] A. C. Snoeren and H. Balakrishnan, An end-to-end Approach to Host Mobility, Proc. ACM Mobicom 00, Boston, MA, Aug. 2000. [9] R. Stewart et al., Stream Control Transport Protocol, IETF RFC 2960, Oct. 2000. [10] R. Stewart et al., Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) Dynamic Address Reconfiguration, draft-ietf-tsvwgaddip-sctp-08.txt, Sept. 2003, work in progress. [11] M. Riegel and M. Tuexen, Mobile SCTP, draft-riegel-tuexen-mobile-sctp-03.txt, Aug. 2003, work in progress. [12] S. J. Koh et al. , Mobile SCTP for Transport Layer Mobility, draft-sjkoh-sctp-mobility-03.txt, Feb. 2004, work in progress. [13] R. Stewart and Q. Xie, Stream Control Transmission Protocol, a Reference Guide, Addison Wesley Longman, 2001. [14] A. K. Salkintzis, The EAP-GPRS Protocol for Tight Integration of WLANs and 3G Cellular Networks, Proc. IEEE VTC 03 Fall, Orlando, FL, Oct. 2003. [15] 3GPP, UTRAN Iub Interface: Signaling transport, 3GPP TS 25.432, v. 6.0.0, Dec. 2003. national SS7 and GSM networks. From 2002 to 2004 he was a research and development engineer at Ericsson Mobile Platforms, Sweden, where he worked on dual-mode UMTS/GPRS handsets. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at UBC. His research interests are quality of service, cross-layer design, and mobility management in wireless networks. VICTOR C. M. LEUNG [S75, M89, SM97, F03] (vleung@ece. ubc.ca) received a B.A.Sc. (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from UBC in 1977, and was awarded the APEBC Gold Medal as head of the graduating class in the Faculty of Applied Science. He attended graduate school at UBC on a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship and obtained a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1981. From 1981 to 1987 he was a senior member of technical staff at Microtel Pacific Research Ltd. (later renamed MPR Teltech Ltd.), specializing in the planning, design, and analysis of satellite communication systems. He also held a part-time position as visiting assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in 1986 and 1987. In 1988 he was a lecturer in the Department of Electronics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at UBC in 1989, where he is a professor, holder of the TELUS Mobility Industrial Research Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Engineering, and a member of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems. His research interests are in the areas of architectural and protocol design and performance analysis for computer and telecommunication networks, with applications in satellite, mobile, personal communications, and high-speed networks. He is a Fvoting member of ACM. He is an editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He is the Technical Programming Committee (TPC) Co-Chair in networking for IEEE WCNC 2005, New Orleans, Louisiana, and has served on the TPCs of numerous international conferences. T EJINDER S. R ANDHAWA (tejinder_randhawa@bcit.ca) until recently was a research scientist at the New Media Innovation Center (NewMIC), Vancouver, Canada, where he led research and development of software defined radios, vertical handoffs, and mobile ad hoc networks in the Wireless group. Prior to NewMIC, he worked in industry for 13 years, holding senior positions with Acterna, Microtel Pacific Research (MPR) Teltech, MacDonald Dettwiler & Associates, and Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. He is a faculty member at the British Columbia Institute of Technology and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, and has taught graduate and senior undergraduate level courses in wireless network protocols, data network protocols, distributed systems, network security, and database systems for several years. He received his Ph.D. in engineering science from Simon Fraser University (2000). He has Masters degrees from both Simon Fraser University (1997) and the University of Saskatchewan (1988). He has co-authored a book and more than 25 IEEE technical papers.

BIOGRAPHIES
L I M A (marym@ece.ubc.ca) received a B.Eng. degree in applied mathematics from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1991 and an M.A.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, in 2004. From 1991 to 2000 she was a network engineer in the Technical Center of Guangdong Post and Telecom, a software engineer in Singapore Telecom, and a network planner in C1 Communications Inc. Her research interests are UMTS/WLAN integration using Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) and modeling SCTP in wireless networks. F EI Y U [S 00, M 04] (feiy@ece.ubc.ca)received an M.S. degree in computer engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 1998, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UBC in 2003. From 1998 to 1999 he was a system engineer at China Telecom, working on the planning, design, and performance analysis of

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