Wi-Fi Offloading Strategies for Facing Mobile Data Traffic Challenges

Abstract

-Mobile data traffic has been experiencing a significantly continuing growth throughout the last decade. It is imposing the mobile network operators with the challenge of offering higher capacities and speeds in response to an ever-growing demand. As a straight-forward reaction of increasing the traditional 3G/LTE network capacities would not always be economically beneficial, alternative solutions have been discussed and/or developed. This paper reviews Wi-Fi offloading, as a simple strategy of increasing network capacities, in comparison to other proposed methods. After performing some real-life mobile data rates measurements in different areas of the city of Tirana, we will give some recommendations on deploying a Wi-Fi offloading strategy regarding the feasibility and the area-specific necessity behind this method.