Methods and apparatus for the communication of cellular network information between a wireless local area network and a mobile station

Abstract

Methods and apparatus for the communication of cellular network information between a wireless local area network (WLAN) and a mobile station are disclosed. In one illustrative example, the mobile station receives (504) a generic container message from the WLAN in an extensible authentication procedure (EAP). The generic container message includes cellular network information associated with one or more available cellular networks previously received by the WLAN. The generic container message is not technology or standard-specific and therefore it may contain cellular network information from a variety of different cellular networks (e.g. 3GPP, 3GPP2, IETF, etc.). The mobile station decodes (506) the generic container message to identify and store (508) the cellular network information in its memory. Preferably, the cellular network information includes information for identifying the cellular networks so that the mobile may appropriately select (510) one of the cellular networks for communication.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates generally to mobile stations communicating with cellular networks and wireless local area networks (WLANs), and more particularly to the communication of cellular network information from one or more cellular networks to mobile stations over WLANs. Background technique [0002] Within the cellular industry, there is a drive to deploy wireless local area networks (WLANs) to communicate with cellular telecommunications networks, thereby enabling mobile stations to access cellular networks and WLANs that offer higher bandwidth. Traditionally, since WLANs were designed to provide only wireless local area networking, no existing protocols provide advertisements to identify what networks are available to the mobile station. Such information would be useful to provide the mobile station with the ability to identify and switch between different cellular networks and / or cellular network technologies as needed. [0003] There is a ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Although these documents describe traditional communications and interactions between WLANs and mobile stations (e.g., the use of EAP), they do not teach cellular network broadcast information to mobile stations for conveying varying cellular technologies, for network selection and other The right solution for the purpose

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