QoE-aware Network Selection in Wireless Heterogeneous Networks

Deployment of next-generation network (4G) begins to spread throughout the world. With variety of network technologies and QoS restrictions on emerging applications; it is more difficult for users to select the best access network to request for connection. Even though many schemes have been proposed in the literature but none of them takes into account quality of experience (QoE) perceived by user for making decision. As QoE represents perception experienced by the user, it is thus an essential indicator for network evaluation, especially with multimedia communications nowadays. Therefore, in this paper we propose a novel network selection mechanism that takes quality of experience into consideration for decision making. It is a user-based and network-assisted approach thus a compromise solution between user and network benefit. The main idea is to use quality of experience of ongoing users in candidate networks as an indicator to select the best network for connection. We have implemented and tested our mechanism in network simulator NS-2. The obtained results illustrate that even with a simple mechanism; we can significantly improve QoE of mobile node and load balancing between networks