A modified-SAW for network selection in heterogeneous wireless networks

Abstract

In the context of heterogeneous networks, users with multi-mode terminals can connect to different radio access technologies such as IEEE802.11, 3G (HSPA and HSPA+) and Long -term Evolution (LTE) at the same time. The challenge is to achieve the Always Best Connected (ABC) concept; the main issue is the automatic choice of the suitable Radio Access Technology (RAT) from the list of the available RATs. This decision is called the network selection (NS). In this paper, we propose a modified Simple Additive Weigh (modified-SAW) function to deal with the drawbacks of the existing solutions. Indeed, the existing Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methods suffer mainly from the famous problem of rank reversal once an alternative is added or removed, other problems occur in the legacy MADMs such as the sensitiveness to the user preference in Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS); the penalization of the alternatives with poor attributes values in Weighted Product Model (WPM). Our simulations brought out the lakes of the traditional MADMs approach in the context of network selection. We modify the SAW method intelligently and we use it to solve the NS problem. Finally, we compare the performance of our solution with the previous works in different scenarios; the simulations show that our proposal outperforms the other existing methods.