Seamless Handover between UMTS and GPRS

UMTS is one step ahead from the 2.5G network GPRS and supports faster data rates with wide coverage area. GPRS and UMTS are already deployed in many countries but seamless handover between GPRS and UMTS still remains as a stumbling block for the service providers to fulfill the continuously increasing customer demand for internet and data access in the IP-based wireless network and to maintain incessant connection for the itinerant service consumers. In this paper we propose a method that mongrelizes 3GPP IMS and MIPv4 to resolve the seamless inter-system handover between UMTS and GPRS with a result of no packet loss and minimum latency so that the itinerant service consumers can get services without any interruption. Keywords-UMTS; GPRS; IMS; OPNET; handover