STRATEGIC USE OF WI-FI IN MOBILE BROADBAND NETWORKS

Mobile networks are facing the growing flood of Internet data. The main reasons for this are the increasing use of smartphones, the availability of flat-rate voice and data bundles, and higher demand for entertainment services like YouTube, Apple’s iTunes and service such video streaming from Television Networks. This increase in data traffic is forecast to accelerate. For mobile network operators this means not only massive business opportunity but also huge challenges how to cope with this phenomenal growth. In this paper we are giving some insight to trend of mobile data growth and impact on operator’s market. It seems obvious that traditional cellular networks, even with next generation upgrades, are not able to handle all this traffic and provide required level of new mobile capacity. Operators are now studying various possibilities to encounter the challenge. Obviously solution will be a set of different actions. However, one of those required actions seems to be to offload the data from cellular networks to some other wireless networks. The most promising candidate is Wi-Fi as it has established strong market position and increasing number of devices support both mobile and Wi-Fi connections. By selectively offloading traffic from mobile to Wi-Fi networks, faster data connections and better end user quality of experience are achieved. Moreover, when offloading portion of traffic from mobile to Wi-Fi networks via freed cellular network resources ensuring that mobile network capacity is preserved for high priority. This thesis work outlines the needs of the mobile community in how it would like to utilize Wi-Fi offload to help promote and develop the usefulness and availability of its services. This paper gives an overview of the current Wi-Fi world, then provides an outline of the necessary standards and requirements in Wi-Fi offload system. Finally, we propose and discuss some architecture capable to provide interworking between Wi-Fi and 3G networks which feature the highest market interest. These architectures can enable 3G subscribers to benefit from high throughput IP connectivity in strategic locations and also to maintain service consistency across WLAN and mobile network.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format