A novel noncooperative game competing model using generalized simple additive weighting method to perform network selection in heterogeneous wireless networks

Network selection mechanisms have a significant role in guaranteeing the QoS for users in a heterogeneous wireless networks environment. These mechanisms allow the selection of an optimal wireless network to satisfy the needs of users. Users are provided with the opportunity to select from multiple connectivity opportunities available all over various wireless networks. Furthermore, the network operators themselves can execute active selection strategies that facilitate proper decision making, in which user preferences are considered. This study proposes a new noncooperative competing game‐theoretic model and strategy space based on user preference. This model can solve network selection problems and capture the inter‐linkages of decisions taken by various networks. A generalized simple additive weighting method is incorporated into the framework of noncooperative game theory. In addition, the utility function is employed to assess the usefulness of the system. Simulation results and analysis illustrate the efficacy of the suggested model in attaining optimum network utility for heterogeneous wireless networks while optimizing user satisfaction. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An analytic network process and trapezoidal interval‐valued fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution network access selection method

Next generation wireless networks consist of many heterogeneous access technologies that should support various service types with different quality of service (QoS) constraints, as well as user, requirements and provider policies. Therefore, the need for network selection mechanisms that consider multiple factors must be addressed. In this paper, a network selection method is proposed by applying the analytic network process to estimate the weights of the selection criteria, as well as a fuzzy version of technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution to perform the ranking of network alternatives. The method is applied to a heterogeneous network environment providing different QoS classes and policy characteristics. Each user applies the method to select the most appropriate network, which satisfies his or her requirements in respect of his or her service‐level agreement (SLA). Performance evaluation shows that when the user requests only one service, the proposed method performs better compared to the original technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution, as well as the Fuzzy AHP‐ELECTRE method. Moreover, the proposed method can be applied in cases where a user requires multiple services simultaneously on a device. The sensitivity analysis of the proposed method shows that it can be properly adjusted to conform to network environment changes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Analysis of Radio Resource Allocation in LTE Uplink

Long term evolution (LTE) uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) as the downlink and uplink transmission schemes respectively. The Quality of Service (QoS) provision to users is one of the key objectives of the wireless network operators. This paper analyses an uplink LTE radio scheduler, called bandwidth and QoS aware (BQA) scheduler and evaluates its QoS performance. The BQA uplink scheduler is designed to provide efficient and fair allocation of the radio resources to users according to: the QoS of various traffic classes and the instantaneous channel conditions. The scheduler functionality is divided into time domain packet scheduling (TDPS) and frequency domain packet scheduling (FDPS). In this paper, an innovative feature, that is user QoS provisioning with dynamic QoS weights, is employed for the BQA scheduler along with multi-bearer users support. The QoS performance of the BQA scheduler is analyzed in several simulation scenarios using heterogeneous traffic environment. The results show that the BQA scheduler guarantees provision of QoS to users.     

Class-based quality of service over air interfaces in 4G mobilenetworks

We present a framework for quality of service provisioning over the air interfaces in future wireless networks, including 3G enhancement and 4G mobile networks. The framework is based on the paradigm of service classes, wherein each class can exhibit a characteristic behavior in terms of resource allocation over the air interface. Using this QoS framework, future wireless network operators can define their own sets of service classes, choose the preferred way of implementing the QoS behavior of these classes, and offer class-based pricing schemes. The user application can choose the service class that best suits its expectations in terms of QoS and cost of access. A class-based bandwidth scheduling scheme is described as a mechanism to implement this QoS framework over CDMA air interfaces. This scheme incorporates the paradigm of service classes, in conjunction with fair resource allocation and air interface congestion resilience, while allocating air interface bandwidth to mobile users     

A-MAC: Adaptive Medium Access Control for Next Generation Wireless Terminals

Next generation (NG) wireless networks are envisioned to provide high bandwidth to mobile users via bandwidth aggregation over heterogeneous wireless architectures. NG wireless networks, however, impose challenges due to their architectural heterogeneity in terms of different access schemes, resource allocation techniques as well as diverse quality of service requirements. These heterogeneities must be captured and handled dynamically as mobile terminals roam between different wireless architectures. However, to address these challenges, the existing proposals require either a significant modification in the network structure and in base stations or a completely new architecture, which lead to integration problems in terms of implementation costs, scalability and backward compatibility. Thus, the integration of the existing medium access schemes, e.g., CSMA, TDMA and CDMA, dictates an adaptive and seamless medium access control (MAC) layer that can achieve high network utilization and meet diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, an adaptive medium access control (A-MAC) layer is proposed to address the heterogeneities posed by the NG wireless networks. A-MAC introduces a two-layered MAC framework that accomplishes the adaptivity to both architectural heterogeneities and diverse QoS requirements. A novel virtual cube concept is introduced as a unified metric to model heterogeneous access schemes and capture their behavior. Based on the virtual cube concept, A-MAC provides architecture-independent decision and QoS based scheduling algorithms for efficient multi-network access. A-MAC performs seamless medium access to multiple networks without requiring any additional modifications in the existing network structures. It is shown via extensive simulations that A-MAC provides adaptivity to the heterogeneities in NG wireless networks and achieves high performance.     

A personalized QoE-aware handover decision based on distributed reinforcement learning

Recent developments in heterogeneous mobile networks and growing demands for variety of real-time and multimedia applications have emphasized the necessity of more intelligent handover decisions. Addressing the context knowledge of mobile devices, users, applications, and networks is the subject of context-aware handoff decision as a recent effort to this aim. However, user perception has not been attended adequately in the area of context-aware handover decision making. Mobile users may have different judgments about the Quality of Service (QoS) depending on their environmental conditions, and personal and psychological characteristics. This reality has been exploited in this paper to introduce a personalized user-centric handoff decision method to decide about the time and target of handover based on User Perceived Quality (UPQ) feedbacks. The UPQ degradations are mainly for the sake of (1) exiting the coverage of the serving Point of Attachment (PoA) or (2) QoS degradation of serving access network. Using UPQ metric, the proposed method obviates the necessity of being aware about rapidly varying network QoS parameters and overcomes the complexity and overhead of gathering and managing some other context information. Moreover, considering the underlying network and geographical map, the proposed method is able to inherently exploit the trajectory information of mobile users for handover decision. UPQ degradation is not only due to the user behaviour, but also due to the behaviours of others users. As such, multi-agent reinforcement learning paradigm has been considered for target PoA selection. The employed decision algorithm is based on WoLF-PHC learning method where UPQ is used as a delayed reward for training. The proposed handoff decision has been implemented under IEEE 802.21 framework using NS2 network simulator. The results have shown better performance of the proposed method comparing to conventional methods assuming regular movement of mobile users.     

Network selection in heterogeneous access networks simultaneously satisfying user profile and QoS

Multimode capability empowers mobile devices to select the appropriate network to meet the requirements of user and applications. However, network selection is a challenging task owing to heterogeneous nature of network access links. At the same time, pervasiveness of mobile communication networks accompanied by the advances in wireless devices has raised the user expectations of persistent service and quality. Therefore, it is important for a mobile device to take situation‐based and timely decisions while selecting an access network to ensure both user's and operator's demand. The existing standard, called IEEE 802.21 (media‐independent handover), considers mobile device signal‐strength parameter for network selection from a list of networks. This research has proposed a ranking algorithm to rank heterogeneous networks based on a set of parameters including user profile and QoS. It selects most suitable network owing to multiple handover scenarios. The simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme has successfully satisfied apparently the contradictory requirements related to user profiles and QoS simultaneously.     

Policy Based Mobility &; Flow Management for IPv6 Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

We propose a dynamic mobility management framework for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and policy enforcement enabled heterogenous wireless networks. Policies and policy rules are defined depending on network infrastructure facilities, service agreements and negotiation results. Each traffic is coupled with an identifiable traffic flow while the heterogenous interface flow bindings are regulated by polices. The network selection, flow distribution, handovers and mobility procedures are flexible and we propose to improve the decision making via Multiple Attributes Decision Making (MADM). Techniques considered in the framework include the IPv6 based Network Mobility (NEMO), multihoming capability, transparent vertical handovers, horizontal handovers and dynamic policy enforcement matching process to improve the Quality of Service (QoS), Quality of Experience (QoE) and ubiquitous connectivity. A experiment testbed and simulation models have been constructed to verify the mobility framework performance in a heterogeneous WiFi, WiMax and UMTS hybrid environment.     

Optimized admission control scheme for coexisting femtocell, wireless and wireline networks

The most important challenge for the implementation of the Future Internet is to make the heterogeneity of access technologies transparent to the end user. Compared to the general case where the interworking networks are independent, the case of femtocells interworking with pre-existing wireless networks poses more challenges due to the sharing of the same backhaul capacity. Therefore, while a user is practically able to initiate the same service through multiple network interfaces, he is allocated capacity from the same capacity pool. However, while the femtocell inherits the QoS mechanisms of cellular networks and is able to provide a reliable CAC, this does not apply to the IP-based networks and that may drastically affect the performance of the femtocell. Hence, we propose an integrated Dynamic Service Admission Control (DSAC) framework for coexisting femtocell, wireless and wireline network environments. In particular, DSAC is able to provide QoS guarantees as a conventional capacity partitioning scheme while at the same time offers better performance in terms of acceptance probability and capacity utilization especially when short term variations of traffic load composition occur.     

5G mobile terminals with advanced QoS-based user-centric aggregation (AQUA) for heterogeneous wireless and mobile networks

In this paper we present an advanced QoS provisioning module with vertical multi-homing framework for future fifth generation (5G) mobile terminals with radio network aggregation capability and traffic load sharing in heterogeneous mobile and wireless environments. The proposed 5G mobile terminal framework is leading to high performance utility networks with high QoS provisioning for any given multimedia service, higher bandwidth utilization and multi-RAT capabilities. It is using vertical multi-homing and virtual QoS routing algorithms within the mobile terminal, that is able to handle simultaneously multiple radio network connections via multiple wireless and mobile network interfaces. Our 5G proposal is user-centric, targeted to always-on connectivity, maximal network utilization, maximal throughput, seamless handovers and performances improvement by using vertical multi-homing, as well as session continuity. The performance of our proposed mobile terminal framework for 5G is evaluated using simulations and analysis with multimedia traffic in heterogeneous mobile and wireless scenarios with coexistence of multiple radio access technologies, such as 3G, 4G as well as future 5G radio access networks.     

GRA Based Network Selection in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

4G wireless networks will integrate heterogeneous technologies such as Wireless LAN and third generation (3G) cellular networks and have the capability to offer various services at any time as per user requirements, anywhere with seamless interoperability at affordable cost. One important challenge in such a heterogeneous wireless environment is to enable network selection mechanisms in order to keep the mobile users always best connected anywhere and at any time. In this paper, a multi-criteria access network selection algorithm is proposed in Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access–Wireless Fidelity environment, in order to facilitate the provision of high quality services and at the same time to satisfy different types of user service level agreements. Analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and grey relational analysis (GRA) methods are applying for optimal access network selection. The proposed methodology combines the AHP to decide the relative weights of criteria set according to network’s performance, as well as the GRA to rank the network alternatives. The advantages of the GRA method are that the results are based on the original data, the calculations are simple and straightforward, and finally it is one of the best methods to make decision under heterogeneous wireless network environment.     

Heterogeneous Network Selection Optimization Algorithm Based on a Markov Decision Model

A network selection optimization algorithm based on the Markov decision process(MDP)is proposed so that mobile terminals can always connect to the best wireless network in a heterogeneous network environment.Considering the different types of service requirements,the MDP model and its reward function are constructed based on the quality of service(QoS)attribute parameters of the mobile users,and the network attribute weights are calculated by using the analytic hierarchy process(AHP).The network handoff decision condition is designed according to the different types of user services and the time-varying characteristics of the network,and the MDP model is solved by using the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing(GA-SA),thus,users can seamlessly switch to the network with the best long-term expected reward value.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has good convergence performance,and can guarantee that users with different service types will obtain satisfactory expected total reward values and have low numbers of network handoffs.     

异构网络中多网络并行传输的网络选择算法

为了充分利用异构网络中的无线资源,提出了一种基于多网络并行传输的异构网络接入选择算法,该算法根据终端接收信号功率确定能够进行通信的无线网络,以这些无线网络的任意非空子集作为候选方案,计算各个方案对应的聚合属性,再根据吞吐量和功耗阈值条件限定候选网络方案,对这些方案建立多属性决策矩阵,采用基于用户偏好的逼近理想值排序法(TOPSIS)得到各个候选网络方案的效用函数值,从中选出与理想方案最接近的多网络接入方案。仿真结果表明该算法能有效改善用户服务质量,提高用户吞吐量,降低用户的单位吞吐量对应的功耗和费用,保证网络的负载均衡。      

Optimal network selection in heterogeneous wireless multimedia networks

The complementary characteristics of different wireless networks make it attractive to integrate a wide range of radio access technologies. Most of previous work on integrating heterogeneous wireless networks concentrates on network layer quality of service (QoS), such as blocking probability and utilization, as design criteria. However, from a user’s point of view, application layer QoS, such as multimedia distortion, is an important issue. In this paper, we propose an optimal distributed network selection scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks considering multimedia application layer QoS. Specifically, we formulate the integrated network as a restless bandit system. With this stochastic optimization formulation, the optimal network selection policy is indexable, meaning that the network with the lowest index should be selected. The proposed scheme can be applicable to both tight coupling and loose coupling scenarios in the integration of heterogeneous wireless networks. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme.     

A Bandwidth Reservation Multiple Access Protocol for Wireless ATM Local Networks

A bandwidth reservation multiple access scheme(BRMA) is proposed to resolve contention and assignbandwidth among multiple users trying to gain access toa common channel such as in mobile users contending for resources in an ATM-based cellular networkor a wireless local area network (LAN) with shortpropagation delays. The protocol is best suited tosupport variable-bit-rate (VBR) traffic that exhibits high temporal fluctuations. Each mobile user isconnected end-to-end to another user over virtualchannels via the base station that is connected to thewired ATM B-ISDN network. The channel capacity is modeled as a time frame with a fixed duration.Each frame starts with minislots, to resolve contentionand reserve bandwidth, followed by data-transmissionslots. Every contending user places a request for data slots in one of the minislots. If therequest is granted by the base station through adownlink broadcast channel, the user then startstransmission in the assigned slot(s). The number ofassigned slots varies according to the required qualityof service (QoS), such as delay and packet lossprobability. A speech activity detector is utilized inorder to indicate the talkspurts to avoid wastingbandwidth. Due to its asynchronous nature, BRMA is ratherinsensitive to the burstiness of the traffic. Since theassignment of the minislots is deterministic, therequest channels are contention-free and the data channels are collision-free. Hence, in spite ofthe overhead (minislots) in each frame, BRMA provideshigher throughput than Packet Reservation MultipleAccess (PRMA) for the same QoS, especially for high-speed systems. A better delay performance is alsoachieved for data traffic compared to Slotted Alohareservation-type protocol PRMA. In addition, BRMAperforms better in terms of bandwidth efficiency thanthe conventional TDMA or the Dynamic TDMA, wherespeech activity detectors are very difficult toimplement.     

A novel modeling approach for vertical handover based on dynamic k-partite graph in heterogeneous networks

The future network world will be embedded with different generations of wireless technologies, such as 3G, 4G and 5G. At the same time, the development of new devices equipped with multiple interfaces is growing rapidly in recent years. As a consequence, the vertical handover protocol is developed in order to provide ubiquitous connectivity in the heterogeneous wireless environment. Indeed, by using this protocol, the users have opportunities to be connected to the Internet through a variety of wireless technologies at any time and anywhere. The main challenge of this protocol is how to select the best access network in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) for users. For that, many algorithms have been proposed and developed to deal with the issue in recent studies. However, all existing algorithms permit only the selection of one access network from the available networks during the vertical handover process. To cope with this problem, in this paper we propose a new approach based on k-partite graph. Firstly, we introduce k-partite graph theory to model the vertical handover problem. Secondly, the selection of the best path is performed by a robust and lightweight mechanism based on cost function and Dijkstra’s algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed approach can achieve better performance of QoS than the existing algorithms for FTP traffic and video streaming.     

异构多模终端的接入选择功能架构

不同类型无线网络的融合是宽带无线通信发展的必然趋势。在异构融合网络环境中,无论何种无线网络都能够提供无所不在的最优服务。具有挑战性的问题就是异构多模终端的管理系统和接入选择功能架构的设计。一种异构多模终端管理架构通过与各协议层的有效交互,可以适应多种接入标准与技术的要求,实现多模异构终端的无缝接入和移动。接入选择是核心研究问题之一,接入选择功能架构主要包含3个模块：接入适配、移动管理、用户偏好。     

A call admission control framework for voice over WLANs

In this article a call admission control framework is presented for voice over wireless local area networks (WLANs). The framework, called WLAN voice manager, manages admission control for voice over IP (VoIP) calls with WLANs as the access networks. WLAN voice manager interacts with WLAN medium access control (MAC) layer protocols, soft-switches (VoIP call agents), routers, and other network devices to perform end-to-end (ETE) quality of service (QoS) provisioning and control for VoIP calls originated from WLANs. By implementing the proposed WLAN voice manager in the WLAN access network, a two-level ETE VoIP QoS control mechanism can be achieved: level 1 QoS for voice traffic over WLAN medium access and level 2 QoS for ETE VoIP services in the networks with WLANs as the local access. The implementation challenges of this framework are discussed for both level 1 and level 2. Possible solutions to the implementation issues are proposed and other remaining open issues are also addressed.     

Network selection in an integrated wireless LAN and UMTS environment using mathematical modeling and computing techniques

The increasing demand for broadband service, at least in hot spot areas, in today's wireless communications is causing cellular network providers to consider the integration of 3G cellular systems and wireless LAN. This has the particular advantage of high data rates and unlicensed spectrum. Consequently, network selection techniques play a vital role in ensuring quality of service in heterogeneous networks. In this article we develop a network selection scheme for an integrated cellular/wireless LAN system. The design goal is to provide the user the best available QoS at any time. The proposed scheme comprises two parts, with the first applying an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to decide the relative weights of evaluative criteria set according to user preferences and service applications, while the second adopts grey relational analysis (GRA) to rank the network alternatives with faster and simpler implementation than AHP. Simulations conducted in a heterogeneous system with UMTS and wireless LAN reveal that the proposed network selection technique can effectively decide the optimum network through making trade-offs among network condition, user preference, and service application, while avoiding frequent handoffs.     

An Access Selection Functional Architecture for Heterogeneous Multi-Mode Terminals

The convergence of heterogeneous wireless networks is an inevitable trend in broadband wireless communications development. In heterogeneous networks convergence environment, each wireless network can provide ubiquitous, best Quality of Service (QoS) services. The challenge lies in the design of the management system and access selection architecture for heterogeneous multi-mode terminals. A type of management architecture for heterogeneous multi-mode terminal via effective interaction with all protocol layers is adaptable for multi-access standards and technical requirements to achieve seamless access and mobility for multi-mode heterogeneous terminals. As the core subject for research, access selection functional architecture mainly consists of three modules, namely access adaptation, mobility management, and user preference.