Abstract: A first base station which initially receives a service request from a wireless terminal requests authentication information from a central security node and receives in response at least, one, but typically two or more, sets of security information. When it is time for a handoff from the first base station to a second base station, the first base station transmits to the second base station at least one of the sets of security information it received from the central security node. The second base station then uses the information it received from the first base station to authenticate the wireless terminal.

Abstract: Paging areas aligned with wireless terminals are dynamically created. A first base station passes to the wireless terminal a list of all the base stations that it knows and are within a prescribed number of handoffs of the first base station. The wireless terminal uses this list to define its own “personal” paging area. Each time the wireless terminal emerges from a sleep state, it listens for the base station having the best signal and compares its identification against the list of base stations in its personal paging area. If the best signal base station is on the list, any paging messages for the wireless terminal are automatically broadcast by that base station. Otherwise, the wireless terminal must conduct a handoff to that base station to obtain a new personal paging area centered on that base station with that base station as paging agent. Messages originating elsewhere in the network are forwarded to the paging agent for delivery to the wireless terminal.

Abstract: A prescribed signal transmission channel parameter is estimated by employing a unique arrangement and/or method that does not require the estimation of all the signal channel parameters. Specifically, this is realized by employing a rotational invariance arrangement or technique that utilizes either spectral, and/or temporal, and/or spatial diversity present in the wireless system to generate a single prescribed parameter of the mobile signal transmission channel. The single prescribed signal transmission channel parameter is obtained by forcing the rotational invariance arrangement or technique to yield the single largest eigenvector from a prescribed relationship of signal data vectors of the signal transmission channel. In one embodiment of the invention the prescribed parameter of the signal transmission channel is the delay that is substantially constant over the diversity, while the gain of each signal transmission channel path may vary.

Abstract: The penalties associated with relying on layer-4 to handle packets lost as a result of a handoff can be reduced by forwarding, in response to a handoff request from a first base station to a second base station, at least one layer-2 frame of a layer-3 packet destined to/from the wireless terminal that has been passed down from layer-3 to layer-2, and so is indicated to have been transmitted at layer-3 even though not all of the layer-2 frames of the layer-3 packet have actually been transmitted. In one embodiment of the invention, each of the at least one layer-2 frames may be encapsulated together in a special layer-3 packet that is transferred from the first base to the second base station in the usual manner of inter-base-station communication. Advantageously, packets are not lost at layer-4 due to handoffs. Thus, layer-4 retransmissions are not required, and so delays in the network are reduced.