Abstract
Interconnection of different access network technologies is an important research topic in mobile telecommunications systems. In this paper, we propose an ns-3 architecture for simulating the interconnection of wireless local area network (WLAN) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). This architecture is based on the architecture proposed by the Third Generation Partnership Project, being the use of virtual interfaces as its main innovation. In order to demonstrate the value of the proposed simulation framework, we implemented the UMTS and WLAN interconnection considering three joint radio resource management strategies for distributing arriving calls. From the simulations results, we can conclude that the proposed simulation architecture is suitable to test and evaluate performance aspects related to the interconnection and joint management of UMTS and WLAN technologies. Copyright (c) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.