A Centralized Network Selection Algorithm Based on Access Router Discovery in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Seamless mobility across heterogeneous wireless networks requires a certain level of Quality of Service (QoS) to be assured as it determines the packet loss and delay during handoff procedure. Selecting the target network in an appropriate time plays a crucial role towards achieving ubiquitous networks. This paper proposes a network discovery and selection method called Improved Access Router Discovery (IARD) in a heterogeneous environment comprising of WLAN and UMTS networks. In this method, the nomination of potential networks is performed in core network using a special Weighted Mean (MW) algorithm with each network ranked based on several criteria and the highest rank network is proposed as the target network. This method was tested by means of simulation under various conditions with different traffic types and was shown to result in more appropriate network selections as compared to other methods.