Research in Motion Corporation

Mcmaster University

Dongmei Zhao

Terence Douglas Todd

Vytautas Robertas Kezys

Mohammed Nawaf Smadi

Amir Antoun Renne Sayegh

Amir Ar Sayegh

A mobile station is assisted to perform a handoff from a current access point in a current extended service set (ESS) to a new access point in a target ESS. A HandOver Mediator, possibly in conjunction with a handover server, performs an authentication process and an association process with an access point in the target ESS while masquerading as the mobile station. Parameters resulting from the authentication process and the association process are then passed to the mobile station and the mobile station can perform a handoff to the new access point.

Reducing handoff latency for a mobile station

For initially establishing a voice call, a first connection leg for the voice call is established between a mobile device operating in a wireless network and a conference room of a conferencing gateway. A second connection leg is established via the conferencing gateway between a processor and a communication device connected in a telephone network. Subsequently, the processor sends a message to the conferencing gateway for transferring the second connection leg from between the processor and the communication device to the conference room and the communication device, for initially establishing the voice call. The conference gateway is configured to combine media streams of connection legs of the voice call.

Conferencing PSTN gateway methods and apparatus to facilitate heterogeneous wireless network handovers for mobile communication devices

Techniques for use in a network processing component is for initially establishing, via a gateway, a voice call between a mobile device which operates in a wireless network and a destination device. A first connection leg of the voice call is to be established between the mobile device and a conference room of the gateway. The technique involves sending to the gateway a request message for establishing a second connection leg between the network processing component and the destination device, and then subsequently sending to the gateway a re-routing message for re-routing the second connection leg from the network processing component to the conference room. This causes a voice call having the first and the second connection legs to be initially established between the mobile device and the destination device via the gateway.

A mobile communication device operating in a wireless local area network (WLAN) of a communication network maintains an inter-enterprise voice call via its WLAN interface (e.g. 802.11/VoIP/SIP) with another communication device in the communication network. During the voice call, a handover of the voice call from the WLAN to a wireless wide area network (WWAN) (e.g. GSM/GPRS) is identified. In response to identifying a handover indication, the mobile device causes a request message (e.g. a SIP INVITE message) to be sent over the WWAN to the conferencing gateway for establishing a first connection leg through the WWAN via its WWAN interface with a conference room of the conferencing gateway. The mobile device also causes a re-routing message (e.g. a SIP REFER message) to be sent to the communication device, so that a second connection leg between the communication device and the conference room may be established.

In one illustrative technique, a contention-free period indication is communicated by a wireless access point (AP) (e.g. a battery-powered AP) to a plurality of mobile communication devices within a beacon of a superframe. The contention-free period indication identifies a duration of a contention-free period within which the mobile devices must refrain from communicating through the AP. During each contention period subframe of each superframe, information is communicated to and/or from the mobile devices through a wireless transceiver of the AP. During each power conservation subframe of each superframe, the wireless transceiver is placed into a power conservation mode which is at least part of the contention-free period. Alternatively, or in combination with the wireless transceiver being placed in the power conservation mode, information for the mobile devices may be communicated to and/or from another AP within each relay subframe of each superframe which is at least part of the contention-free period. Advantageously, power consumption may be reduced in the AP and/or a single radio interface may be utilized in the AP for communications. The durations of the power conservation subframe and the other subframes may be variably adjusted to tradeoff power savings with a real-time capacity requirement of the AP.

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Hamilton, Canada

Dongmei Zhao