AP based traffic steering for LTE-Wi-Fi networks

In this paper, we introduce and evaluate an access point (AP) based traffic steering for LTE-Wi-Fi network. It uses a network based approach to determine whether the Wi-Fi network should accept or reject a UE when it attempts to connect and periodically evaluates whether to send any of the UEs back to the LTE network. No changes on the eNB and UE sides are needed. The proposed algorithm has a learning mechanism which adapts to the dynamic network conditions, and it also includes context information like location context, application context and offered traffic context to assist traffic steering. The system and software architectures are also given. Despite of the lack of LTE information, simulations show that it is effective in reduction of outage performance, when compared with existing algorithms. Therefore, we intend to complete implementation of the algorithm on a LTE-Wi-Fi testbed.