Architecture alternatives for wireless data services

The growth in wireless personal communications is expected to bring about an increase in data communications, both by emulating existing wireline data services, and by enabling entirely new services and applications. This paper describes a generalized network architecture for the interworking of wireless access systems (supporting wireless data users) to wireline networks (on which there are data services), and discusses the implementation of particular elements of the architecture. The generalized architecture describes wireless data users connected to services on wireline networks by way of an intermediate network and an appropriate interworking function (IWF). The intermediate network could be implemented in a variety of ways, such as a circuit-switched, centralized packet-switched, or a local area network (LAN). The IWF adapts radio protocols to those on the wireline network, and buffers the remote data service from user movement. The impacts of basic data call handling (call origination, call delivery, and handoff) on the intermediate network are the principle topic.<<ETX>>