Heterogeneous Mesh Network for LTE Data Offloading using Specialized Nodes

Congestion in LTE and other cellular networks can be reduced by cell splitting and by buying more spectrum. But due to the heavy licensing fee and the cost o f setting up new base stations, service providers have started to resort to the unlicensed spectrum, particularly the ISM band to offload some of the data from the LTE network locally, in areas of heavy user base. There does not exist a long-term and standard solution although some efforts have been made to enable cooperation between the different networks like LTE and IEEE 802.11. Thus, a new architecture and accompanying routing protocol is proposed to enable a tighter integration between different networks to improve QoS and overall performance of the combined heterogeneous network. The performance improvement is 23 times more than LTE and Wi-Fi networks when used independently, even when twice the bandwidth is used by the component networks alone.