Interconnection & Handover Between IEEE 802.16e & UMTS

Currently, the interruptions of service during the vertical handover between different technologies, especially when the service is sensitive to delay, pose a real problem to the end users. In order to reduce the latency during the vertical handover; the authors propose in this paper, to combine two mechanisms proposed recently for the handover. The both mechanisms that they will combine in the case of vertical handover are: the IEEE 802.21 architecture, that allows obtaining information on networks before the handover; and the MSCTP protocol that uses during the handover the multi-homing technique to open several IP sessions at the same time between the mobile station and the networks.