Energy-Efficient Vertical Handovers

Recent studies have shown that there are currently more than 1.08 billion of Smartphones in the world, with around 89 % of them used throughout the day. On average each of these users transfers more than 450 Mbytes per month via either a cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. So far it has been up to the user to decide which one of these two networks to use at each particular moment. In this master’s thesis, the potential energy savings that could be achieved by means of automating the choice of network interface are explored. This way, the user equipment itself would be able to initiate handovers from one radio access technology to another depending on each particular service and on the environmental conditions, and hence it could extend its battery life. The work has focused in energy efficient vertical handovers (VHOs) between Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Wi-Fi networks. The rapid growth and increasing interest in LTE networks have been the main reasons why these networks have been chosen over Third Generation Mobile Networks. Nevertheless this work can be easily extended to other radi