ANDSF-Assisted vertical handover decisions in the IEEE 802.11/LTE-Advanced network

To address the challenging issues of energy-efficiency and seamless connectivity in heterogeneous networks, 3GPP and IEEE have recently incorporated several architectural and functional enhancements to the baseline operation of their standards for cellular and wireless local area network access, respectively. Based on the 3GPP Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) as well as the advanced measurement capabilities provided by the IEEE 802.11-2012 and the 3GPP Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) Standards, we propose an ANDSF-assisted energy-efficient vertical handover decision algorithm for the heterogeneous IEEE 802.11-2012 / LTE-A network. The proposed algorithm enables multi-mode mobile terminals to select and associate with the network point of attachment that minimizes the average overall power consumption at the mobile terminal and guarantees a minimum supported quality of service for its ongoing connections. System-level simulations demonstrate the performance of the proposed algorithm and compare it against that of other competing solutions.