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Next-generation wireless networking is evolving towards a multi-service heterogeneous paradigm that converges different pervasive access technologies and provides a large set of novel revenue generating applications. Hence, system complexity increases due to its embedded heterogeneity, which can not be accounted by the existing modeling and performance evaluation techniques. Consequently, the development of new modeling approaches becomes as a crucial requirement for proper system design and performance evaluation. This paper presents a novel mobility model for a two-tier integrated wireless system using a new modeling approach that accommodates the aforementioned complexity. Additionally, a novel session model is developed as an adapted version of the proposed mobility model. These models use phase-type distributions that are known to approximate any generic probability laws. Using the proposed session model, a novel generic analytical framework is developed to obtain several salient performance metrics such as network utilization times and handoff rates. Simulation and analysis results prove the proposed model validity and demonstrate the accuracy of the novel modeling approach when compared with traditional modeling techniques.

Call admission control plays an important role in quality of service (QoS) provisioning in the interworking between the cellular network and wireless local area network (WLAN). Within the WLAN coverage, a service request can be admitted into the cellular network or the WLAN. Due to the heterogeneous underlying QoS support of the cellular network and WLANs, the admission of traffic in the WLAN coverage has a significant impact on QoS satisfaction and overall resource utilization, especially when multiple services are considered. A popular admission strategy (referred to as WLAN-first scheme) is to admit the incoming service requests into the WLAN whenever it is available so as to take advantage of the low cost and large bandwidth of the WLAN. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the WLAN-first scheme. It is observed that the overall resource utilization can be maximized when the admission regions for voice and data services in a cell and a WLAN are properly configured.

Heterogeneous wireless networks will be dominant in the next-generation wireless networks with the integration of various wireless access networks. Wireless mesh networks will become to a key technology as an economically viable solution for wide deployment of high speed, scalable and ubiquitous wireless Internet services.In this thesis, we consider an interworking architecture of wireless mesh backbone and propose an effective vertical handoff scheme between 802.11 and 802.16 wireless access networks. The proposed vertical handoff scheme aims at reducing handoff signaling overhead on the wireless backbone and providing a low handoff delay to mobile nodes. The handoff signaling procedure in different scenarios is discussed. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to my supervisor, Professor Weihua Zhuang, for her continuous guidance, encouragement, and patience, and for giving me the opportunity to do this work. Without her advice and support not only in academic matters but also in personal matters,

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