Network selection in 3G-WLAN interworking environment using TOPSIS

Abstract

The expansion of wireless technologies and their pervasiveness has resulted in various network interfaces in mobile terminals. Therefore it is necessary for mobile terminals to implement vertical handover techniques which encourage the clients to move effectively and seamlessly among different diverse network systems. In vertical handover, selection of appropriate network is an extremely critical stage as wrongly chosen destination network ruins the entire novel purpose of vertical handover. This can successively lead to ping pong effect, under utilization of network resources, and dissatisfaction among users. This problem of network selection is very much related to Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and can be modeled on various techniques given for it. In this paper, utilizing a MCDM technique called TOPSIS, an approach for destination network selection is proposed. The scope is limited to 802.11 destination networks. As a novel contribution, the list of parameters is selected from the perspective that either they are the part of IEEE 802.11 beacon frame or can be embedded in it using some beacon stuffing technique. In the later case we also give how many additional bits are required for stuffing them in the beacon frame. This makes our technique a practically usable one.