Terminal Management and Intelligent Access Selection in Heterogeneous Environments

This paper presents a mobile terminal architecture for devices operating in heterogeneous environments, which incorporates intelligence for supporting mobility and roaming across legacy access networks. It focuses on the structure and functionality of the proposed scheme that supports terminal-initiated and terminal-controlled access network selection in heterogeneous networks. It discusses the decomposition of the proposed Terminal Management System into separate modules, responsible for retrieving link-layer measurements from the attachment points in the terminal’s neighborhood, for handling the user’s profile and for performing intelligent access network selection. This latter function aims at independently determining the optimal local interface and attachment point through which applications can be obtained as efficiently as possible, by taking into account network status and resource availability, user preferences and service requirements.

Michael E. TheologouEmail: