Seamless mobile data offloading in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks based on IEEE 802.21 and user experience

The increase on smartphone usage has brought the burden of data traffic with it. Operators are looking for cost-effective solutions to overcome the problem of 3G infrastructure for high contention traffic scenarios. Several schemes were offered to save the moment, and they brought some extra costs including deploying femtocell or WiMax, LTE, LTE-Advanced systems along with their expensive equipment. On the other hand, operators are expanding their networks with 802.11 technologies such that they can exploit the free-band communication. Meaning the data traffic can handover between WLAN and UMTS interchangeably. By using NS-2 simulator, we implemented IEEE 802.21 WG´s Media Independent Handover (MIH) module by combining with Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) values collected from user equipment (UE) and observed a recovered throughput for both medium. We found that there is a tradeoff among energy efficiency, delay tolerance and cost. Furthermore, in this study, we integrated a Quality of Experience (QoE) metric during real-time handover decision process so that with this type of collaborative solution, an operator will be unique in terms of user happiness and heterogeneous network management.