A Novel Distributed Network Selection Scheme for Heterogeneous Wireless Network Environments

In this paper, we propose a distributed network selection scheme for the heterogeneous wireless network environment. The network selection problem is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem which maximizes the channel capacity and minimizes the blocking probability simultaneously. By taking the throughput metric into consideration, the formulated multiobjective optimization problem is transformed into a maximization problem. We solve the transformed maximization problem to calculate the network selection result in a distributed method. The calculated network selection result proves to be a Pareto Optimal solution of the original multiobjective optimization problem. The proposed scheme guarantees that based on limited local information, each user can select a new network device with high channel capacity and low blocking probability. Comprehensive experiment results show that the proposed scheme promotes the total throughput and user-served ratio significantly.