An Autonomic Interface Selection Method for Multi-interfaces Mobile Terminal in Heterogeneous Environment

Heterogeneous wireless access has become an ordinary scenario in the future wireless communications. A multi-interface mobile terminal may use different types of network interfaces to obtain services seamlessly and continuously. Therefore, the multi-interfaces mobile terminal needs a mechanism to select the optimal interface for the communication. Meanwhile, autonomicity feature is being introduced for autonomy and effectiveness in managing more dynamic and heterogeneous networks. An autonomic interface selection architecture (AISA) is proposed in this paper to select a servicing interface dynamically and automatically. The AISA can select a suitable interface among several available interfaces, for every application based on different autonomic decision policies. This architecture can sense and interpret contextual changes in the network, and can adapt to meet changing network environment and user requirements in selecting an interface. The simulation result shows that AISA can utilize human experience to select the most favorable interface for an application in an autonomic way.