WiMAX and WiFi have emerged as promising

broadband access solutions for the latest generation of wireless

MANs and LANs, respectively. Their complementary features

enable the use of WiMAX as a backhaul service to connect

multiple dispersed WiFi hotspots to the Internet. This study

proposes an integrated architecture utilizing a novel

WiMAX/WiFi Access Point (W2-AP) device to effectively combine

the WiMAX and WiFi technologies. In the proposed architecture,

the protocol operation of the WiFi hotspots is the same as that of

the WiMAX system. As a result, the WiFi network can support

connection-oriented transmissions and QoS in a similar fashion to

the WiMAX system, and thus a considerable improvement in the

delay performance is obtained. The numerical results obtained

using a Qualnet simulator confirm both the effectiveness and the

efficiency of the proposed architecture.