Patent ID: 8538025

Claim:
A method for supporting a zone switched based handover of a mobile station (MS), the method comprising: transmitting, by the MS to a Legacy Zone (LZone) of a Target Base Station (TBS), a first ranging request message to perform a network reentry procedure for the zone switched based handover; receiving, by the MS from the LZone, a first ranging response message including a zone switch Time/Length/Value (TLV) parameter indicating a zone switching; transmitting, by the MS to an IEEE 802.16m zone (MZone) of the TBS, a second ranging request message to perform the zone switching; receiving, by the MS from the MZone, a second ranging response message including security association related information; and generating a Traffic Encryption Key (TEK) using the security association related information, wherein the LZone supports IEEE 802.16e system and the MZone supports an advanced system compared to the IEEE 802.16e system.