On the enhancement of mobility and multimedia communications in heterogeneous RANs

Ambient Networks (AN) aim to embrace the heterogeneity arising from different network technologies such that it appears homogeneous to the potential users at the level of network service provisioning. This paper focuses on the employment of a State Transfer Module (STM) in AN for enhancing mobility and minimising the impact of multimedia service discrepancy (e.g., security, session continuity) by supporting the transfer of authentication and authorisation states upon handoff as well as supporting multimedia session continuation while the users roam and handoff across heterogeneous wireless networks.