Evaluation of an Intelligent Utility-Based Strategy for Dynamic Wireless Network Selection

In the case of next generation wireless networks, different users with various multi-homed personal wireless devices will aim to exploit the full potential of the choice of services and applications available over different radio access networks. In their selection of a certain radio access network consumers will consider money and delay preferences for the current application and will rely on intelligent network-selection decision strategies to aid them in their choice. This paper describes the evaluation of an intelligent utility-based strategy for network selection in a multi-access network situation for transfer of large non real-time data files. A number of scenarios are examined which compare the proposed network selection strategy against other possible strategies. Test results show how by using this network selection strategy significant benefits in terms of combined average delay and cost per file transferred as well as transfer efficiency are obtained.