Design and Implementation of an Offloading Technology for 3.5G Networks

Improving cellular backhaul capacity in the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) has long been desired, and is even demanding now due to the ever-advancing access technologies. Considering the pricy traditional leased line solution, it is tempting to devise a cost-effective alternative. In this work, we propose an offloading technology in order to divert a major part of the backhaul traffic to links that are more cost affordable. An experimental system is prototyped and tested. Measurements indicate good performance of our approach.