Patent 10111159 was granted and assigned to British Telecommunications Public Limited Company on October, 2018 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A wireless communications device has network interfaces for accessing cellular data networks and Wi-Fi wireless local area networks. Wi-Fi offload allows data traffic to be moved away from the cellular network to the Wi-Fi network. To avoid any existing data sessions being broken during offload, Proxy Mobile IP (PMIP) must be supported by a Wi-Fi access point and associated Mobile Access Gateway. Before Wi-Fi association and authentication, the wireless communication device scans the surrounding area for access points and determines which of the access points supports PMIP before selecting one for association.