Performance of a Heterogeneous Network with UMTS, Wi-Fi and WiMAX

This paper addresses the Common Radio Resources Management of a Heterogeneous Network composed of three different Radio Access Network (RANs): UMTS, Wi-Fi and Mobile-WiMAX. The network is managed by an algorithm based on a priority table, user sessions being steered preferentially to a given RAN according to the service type. Six services are defined, including Voice, Web browsing and Email. A time-based, system-level, simulation tool was developed in order to evaluate the network performance. Results show that blocking probability and average delay are optimised (minimised) when non-conversational user data sessions are steered preferentially to M-WiMAX. An overall network degradation by selective RAN deactivation is maximised when M-WiMAX is switched off, blocking probability and average delay raising 10 and 100 times, respectively. The average delay is reduced 20 to 30 % when the channel bandwidth of M-WiMAX is increased from 5 to 10 MHz.