Cellular/Wireless LAN Integration

Ensuring consistent wireless LAN in building coverage is far from easy. Most installations
are undertaken on the basis of rule of thumb estimates of how many transceivers
are needed to provide continuous coverage across a given service area.
In many in-building environments, coverage from the cellular networks (either from
outdoor microcells or indoor picocells) may well be more consistent than wireless LAN
coverage. This makes handover protocols difficult to implement. Users will continuously
be moved from wireless LAN to cellular coverage and back again. This in turn
creates more discontinuity rather than less discontinuity in service provision. For these
reasons, it is unlikely that wireless LAN/cellular technologies will be successfully integrated,
at least for the immediately foreseeable future.