TSA: Terminal-supported 5G network optimization

Fourth Generation (4G) cellular networks have millions of active subscribers around the globe. These networks have allowed data rates that were traditionally out of reach of mobile terminals and, ultimately, opened up new business opportunities for content providers. However, 4G carriers are also deploying WiFi hotspots as a complementary technology to access their core networks and have found it necessary to offload traffic from their cellular access networks to aleviate the serious congestion problems they were facing. These congestion are expected to persist and even worsen in the transition to 5G cellular networks. In this work we borrow ideas from the field of Software-Defined Networks (SDNs) to include user terminals as an integral part of that paradigm, thus contributing to global network optimization. By integrating a virtual switch into the terminals, a centralized controller can decide which access network the terminals should connect to based on both terminal (user profiling) and network-side information. A novel aspect of our proposal is that wireless terminal interface configuration is an integral part of the architecture.