Motorola Corporation

Motorola Solutions, Inc.

Chad M Fors

Rajesh S Pazhyannur

Venkat Gopikanth

Raymond M Liss

Robert T Love

To address the need for an apparatus and method for handoff from a cellular wireless network to a non-cellular wireless network (WLAN, e.g.), the present application describes an access gateway () and a dual mode mobile station () that enable such handoffs. The MS provides information to the access gateway so that it can initiate a handoff with the serving cellular MSC (). By triggering handoffs in this manner, cellular networks need not have special information about non-cellular networks to support handoffs. Instead, dual mode MSs can determine when a handoff to a non-cellular network is preferred and request a handin () from the non-cellular network.

Method and apparatus for a target-initiated handoff from a source cellular wireless network to a target non-cellular wireless network

To address the need for an apparatus and method for handoff from a cellular wireless network to a non-cellular wireless network (WLAN, e.g.), the present application describes an access gateway () and a dual mode mobile station () that enable such handoffs. Dual mode MSs can determine when a handoff to a non-cellular network is preferred and request a handin () from the non-cellular network. The access gateway provides information to the MS () so that it can initiate a handoff through the serving cellular network. Triggering handoffs in this manner, allows cellular networks to handle handoffs to non-cellular networks in much the same way they handle inter-MSC handoffs today, i.e., source initiated.

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Algonquin, IL, United States of America

Chad M Fors