Cost-Function-Based Network Selection Strategy in Integrated Wireless and Mobile Networks

Wireless and mobile networks have experienced great success over the past few years. However, any single type of wireless and mobile network cannot provide all types of services, e.g., wide coverage and high bandwidth. An integrated wireless and mobile network is introduced by combining these different types of wireless and mobile networks, which can provide more comprehensive services. In an integrated wireless and mobile network, a mobile terminal that is equipped with heterogeneous network interfaces is capable of accessing all the available networks. Therefore, how to select a desired network is an important issue for the integrated wireless and mobile network. Although some network-selection strategies have been proposed, most of them are designed to meet a user's individual needs, such as the bandwidth, the access fee, or the power consumption. The system performance also has not been touched. In this paper, we propose a cost-function-based network selection (CFNS) strategy in an integrated wireless and mobile network from a system's perspective, which also considers a user's needs. We also analyze the system performance of the proposed network-selection strategy by using a theoretical model and extensive simulations. The results obtained show that the proposed network-selection strategy affects multiple system parameters, which needs to be handled carefully.