A User-preference-aware Terminal-controlled Access
Network Selection Scheme in Heterogeneous
Wireless Networks
Guannan Xie
1
Huifang Chen
*, 1, 2
Lei Xie
1, 2
Kuang Wang
1, 2
1
Dept. of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University
2
Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Information Network Technology
No. 38, Zheda Road, Hangzhou 310027, P. R. China
E-mail: {xgn911, chenhf, xiel, wangk}@zju.edu.cn
Abstract—The coexistence and integration of multiple radio
access technologies (RATs) deployed by different network
operators are fundamental for next-generation mobile
communication systems. In heterogeneous wireless environments,
the access network selection, which is to select the most suitable
network(s) for a terminal equipped with multiple radio interfaces
according to various selection strategies, is a very important issue
resulting in the performance maximization. In this paper, we
propose a terminal-controlled access network selection scheme
with parallel transmission capability for heterogeneous wireless
networks, in which the suitable network(s) is(are) selected to
access according to the total utility of different access networks.
And the utility of each RAT is calculated based on the user
preference and multiple access network criteria. Furthermore,
the terminal-controlled access network selection with parallel
transmission is formulated as a multi-constraint Knapsack
problem which is solved with the exhaustive method to an
optimum combination of RATs. Our proposed scheme is user-
preference-aware, cost-aware, power-aware, and QoS-oriented.
Simulation results show that our proposed access network
selection scheme with parallel transmission can greatly improve
the achieved data transmission rate with only a little increment in
the cost and power consumption.
Keywords—Heterogeneous wireless networks; Access network
selection; Utility; Parallel transmission
I. INTRODUCTION
The fourth generation of mobile communication system is
expected to meet the continuously increasing requirements of
users. To satisfy these requirements, it is necessary to integrate
heterogeneous radio access networks, such as Universal Mobile
Telecommunications Systems (UMTS), Long Term Evolution
(LTE), Wireless Metropolitan Access Networks (WMANs),
Wireless Local Access Networks (WLANs), and so on.
In heterogeneous network environments, to ensure users
always best connected anywhere and anytime to different
access networks, multi-mode mobile terminals (MMTs)
equipped with multiple radio network interface cards (NICs)
should be able to perform sense, make selection and handle
handover among the existed RATs surround them. Therefore,
the access network selection issue should be investigated to
select the best available RAT(s) that satisfies (satisfy) the
users’ quality of service (QoS) requirements.
Existing access network selection schemes in
heterogeneous wireless networks can be classified into three
categories, network-controlled, terminal-controlled and hybrid.
In network-controlled schemes, network operators keep tight
control over users to make the most profitable use of networks,
where terminal users can only influence their preferences in a
limited way. In terminal-controlled schemes [1-3], users have
greater control of their terminal behavior and can select the
most satisfying network(s) to connect since their MMTs can
store user preferences, and are in an efficient position to collect
information about their own capabilities and surrounding
RATs. It is suitable that the MMT makes the selection on its
own. In hybrid schemes, access network selection decisions are
made based on the information provided by both the network
and the terminal. However, more constraints are considered
and the hybrid system seems more complicated.
In [4] and [5], a comparative survey of the access network
selection issue is presented, and a variety of algorithms have
been proposed, such as fuzzy logic, multiple-attribute decision
making, data prediction algorithm, game theory, utility
function, context-aware concept, etc. Most of these existing
algorithms only consider the situation that the MMT selects the
most one suitable network to access. If the radio interfaces of
an MMT can work simultaneously, the MMT is able to select
more than one network to access, and data packets are
transmitted through these connected wireless links in parallel.
With this mechanism, the transmission performance of the
MMT can be effectively enhanced. However, there are only a
few works considering the parallel transmission in
heterogeneous wireless networks [3, 6-7]. The joint resource
allocation problem with parallel transmission is investigated in
[6], and a vertical handoff decision algorithm with parallel
transmission capability is presented in [7]. Both of them are not
focused on the terminal-controlled but network-controlled
access network selection problem. In [3], a network access
selection scheme, which only considers two criteria, power and
throughput, is proposed, and two criteria are apparently not
quite enough for the MMT to choose the most satisfying
network(s). Hence, it is necessary to improve the existing
methods. We focus on the terminal-controlled scheme with
parallel transmission and consider more criteria in this work.
*
Corresponding author: Huifang Chen, chenhf@zju.edu.cn, +86-571-8795-
1820
This work was partly supported by National Natural Science Foundation o
China (No. 61071129, No. 61171087), Science and Technology Departmen
of Zhejiang Province (No. 2012C01036-1, No. 2011R10035, No.
2011R09003-06).
978-1-4673-6187-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE