Simultaneous multi-access in heterogeneous mobile networks

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Hugo Miguel Almeida
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/14400
• topic: Flow mobility; PMIPv6; Femtocell; Rede móvel -- Mobile network; Gestão de tráfego; Tecnologia da comunicação -- Communication technology

The exponential growth of the number of multihomed mobile devices is changing the way how we connect to the Internet. Unfortunately, it is not yet easily possible to a multihomed device to be simultaneously connected to the network through multiple links. This work enhances the network access of multihomed devices. This enhancement is achieved by using simultaneously all of the mobile devices interfaces, and by individually routing each data flow through the most adequate technology. The proposed solution is only deployed at the network core and it does not depend on the mobile devices, i.e., it’s transparent to the mobile devices. This work gives the necessary tools to reuse the already deployed technologies like WiFi or 3G/LTE. Moreover, it is also possible to extend the network by using femtocells which support multi access technologies. This work is also integrated with IEEE 802.21 standard to improve the handover mechanisms in the network. Additionally, we also propose an integration with a broker that can manage all the data flows individually. The proposed solution improves the quality of service of the users while not overloading the operator infrastructure. Evaluation results, obtained from the developed prototype, evidence that the overhead for using the proposed solution is very small when compared to the advantages.