SON for LTE-WLAN access network selection: design and performance

Abstract

Mobile network operators (MNOs) are deploying carrier-grade Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) as an important complementary system to cellular networks. Access network selection (ANS) between cellular and WLAN is an essential component to improve network performance and user quality-of-service (QoS) via controlled loading of these systems. In emerging heterogeneous networks characterized by different cell sizes and diverse WLAN deployments, automatic tuning of the network selection functionality plays a crucial role. In this article, we present two distinct Self-Organizing Network (SON) schemes for tuning the ANS between the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and WLAN systems. The SON functions differ in terms of availability of inter-system information exchange and internal algorithm design for traffic load control. System level simulations in a site-specific dense urban network show that the proposed schemes improve significantly the user quality of service (QoS), and network capacity over the reference scheme when offloading to WLAN is performed simply based on signal coverage.