Enhanced power-friendly access network selection strategy for multimedia delivery over heterogeneous wireless networks

The continuing growth in video content exchanged by mobile users creates challenges for the network service providers in terms of supporting seamless multimedia delivery at high quality levels, especially given the existing wireless network resources. A solution that deals with this mobile broadband data growth is to make use of multiple networks supported by diverse radio access technologies. This multiaccess solution requires innovative network selection mechanisms to keep the mobile users always best connected anywhere and anytime. Additionally, there is a need to develop energy efficient techniques in order to reduce power consumption in next-generation wireless networks, while meeting user quality expectations. In this context, this paper proposes an enhanced power-friendly access network selection solution (E-PoFANS) for multimedia delivery over heterogeneous wireless networks. E-PoFANS enables the battery of the mobile device to last longer, while performing multimedia content delivery, and maintains an acceptable user perceived quality by selecting the network that offers the best energy-quality tradeoff. Based on real test-bed measurements, the proposed solution is modeled and validated through simulations. The results show how by using E-PoFANS, the users achieve up to 30% more energy savings with insignificant degradation in quality, in comparison with another state-of-the-art energy efficient network selection solution.