Energy-Efficient Dynamic Network Selection in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The complementary features of various wireless access technologies in heterogeneous wireless networks make it attractive and challenging to offer users an always best connected (ABC) service. To achieve this goal, the dynamic network selection has received many research efforts. However, most of the existing work have focused on the network layer performance and ignored the consideration of energy efficiency. To fill this gap, an energy-efficient network selection scheme is proposed in this paper to improve the energy efficiency of wireless network access in heterogeneous wireless networks environment. The dynamics of network selection is formulated as the process of an evolutionary game. The users in different service areas complete for the data rate from different wireless networks (i.e., WMAN, cellular networks, and WLAN), and the network selection made by a user is based on its payoff that is a function of the data rate and power consumption. The addressed problem is then modelled by the replicator dynamics. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the significant performance improvement compared to the existing scheme.