An intelligent radio access network selection and optimisation system in heterogeneous communication environments

Abstract

The overlapping of the different wireless network technologies creates heterogeneous communication environments. Future mobile communication system considers the technological and operational services of heterogeneous communication environments. Based on its packet switched core, the access to future mobile communication system will not be restricted to the mobile cellular networks but may be via other wireless or even wired technologies. Such universal access can enable service convergence, joint resource management, and adaptive quality of service. However, in order to realise the universal access, there are still many pending challenges to solve. One of them is the selection of the most appropriate radio access network. Previous work on the network selection has concentrated on serving the requesting user, but the existing users and the consumption of the network resources were not the main focus. Such network selection decision might only be able to benefit a limited number of users while the satisfaction levels of some users are compromised, and the network resources might be consumed in an ineffective way. Solutions are needed to handle the radio access network selection in a manner that both of the satisfaction levels of all users and the network resource consumption are considered. This thesis proposes an intelligent radio access network selection and optimisation system. The work in this thesis includes the proposal of an architecture for the radio access network selection and optimisation system and the creation of novel adaptive algorithms that are employed by the network selection system. The proposed algorithms solve the limitations of previous work and adaptively optimise network resource consumption and implement different policies to cope with different scenarios, network conditions, and aims of operators. Furthermore, this thesis also presents novel network resource availability evaluation models. The proposed models study the physical principles of the considered radio access network and avoid employing assumptions which are too stringent abstractions of real network scenarios. They enable the implementation of call level simulations for the comparison and evaluation of the performance of the network selection and optimisation algorithms.