AHP and Group Decision Making for Access Network Selection in Multi-Homed Mobile Terminals

The evolving fourth generation wireless networks provide heterogeneous wireless access. This feature enables the multi homed mobile devices to seamlessly roam across various wireless access technologies and to connect always to the best available access network that provides the best QOS at a minimum cost. Different applications have different QOS requirements and accordingly their choice of access network selection varies. This Paper presents an Access Network selection mechanism for multihomed mobile terminals that enable users to dynamically choose the right access network based on a set of QOS parameters, when they are moving from one coverage area to another. It also exploits the use of groupdecision making to capture the QOS requirements of audio and video traffic and later these individual assessments are combined into a consensus for multi-media traffic for Voice-over-IP applications. Keywordsaccess network selection; multi-homed mobile terminals; QOS parameters; AHP; group decision making;