QoE-Based Network Selection in Heterogeneous Environments

International audienceThe increasing demand to be connected anywhere, anytime and anyhow has encouraged thedeployment of heterogeneous networks having a mix of technologies such as LTE, Wi-Fi,WiMAX, etc. At the same time, most of the new user terminals (e.g. smart phones, tablets, etc.)are equipped with multiple interfaces, which allow them to select the access network that offersthe best quality. Managing network in such environment is challenging. Moreover, nowadaysquality of experience (QoE) has become a crucial issue due to a phenomenal growth inmultimedia traffic. As user satisfaction is the key to success of any service, the networkselection should be centered on QoE or the quality perceived by the end user. In other words, anetwork selection mechanism should select the network that offers the best QoE, while trying tooptimize the network resources. In this chapter, we first present a QoE-based network selectionmechanism for homogeneous environment. When several points of attachment are available,we propose to use a QoE-based solution that allows users to select the best network whilekeeping load balanced among them. Then we provide a network selection scheme forheterogeneous environment, which is the main focus of the rest of this chapter. Our proposaltakes QoE into account (among other metrics) for network selection and also provides betterload balancing between different networks. It is a user-based and network-assisted approach.By providing users with relevant information about the network for decision-making process, thisapproach is a good compromise for both user and network operator