Systems and Methods for Seamlessly Roaming Between a Wireless Wide Area Network and a Wireless Local Area Network

摘要

The present invention takes the advantage of the WLAN resources in hotspots for voice and data connections and enables seamless handover between WWAN and WLAN and vice versa. This allows two users in the hotspots to communicate with each other by making a voice over IP (VoIP) or video call, thus achieving cost savings for the end users and WWAN resources savings for the wireless operators. According to one embodiment of the invention, a mobile terminal has wireless wide area network (WWAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN) interfaces. The mobile terminal via a WWAN. If a WLAN is present, the mobile terminal sends a handover request together with its network address to the called mobile terminal, using a short message service (SMS) technique or a watermarking technique, for initiating a WLAN call with the called mobile terminal via a WLAN. After the WLAN call is established with the called mobile terminal, the mobile terminal releases the WWAN call.