Mobility and quality of service across heterogeneous wireless networks

The ability to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) is one of the key issues in the creation of a telecommunication system. In this paper, we deal with some aspects of providing QoS in wired cum wireless communication environment, focusing on the specific feature of guaranteeing session continuity when the wireless networks, to which a mobile terminal connects to, are also heterogeneous. The terms that define what QoS is should, in this case, be reviewed in order to account also for all aspects related to user mobility inside such an environment. In this paper, such a new framework for the representation of QoS is proposed. Moreover, a wireless mobility test case is also presented. This is based on appropriate middleware we implemented, which allows a mobile terminal to experience real wireless IP mobility while moving on a large spatial scale between different sites, scattered over a metropolitan area. 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.