A Framework for Gateway and Access Network Selection in Ad-Hoc Distributed Personal Networks

A personal network (PN) is a network of personal devices regardless of their geographical locations. A PN may consist of several ad-hoc sub-networks, each of which is referred to as a cluster. Different clusters are connected to each other through their gateways and using interconnecting structures, e.g., the Internet. Inside each cluster, there might be several nodes that are able to act as gateway. Gateway nodes may support different access technologies, such as WiFi, Ethernet, WiMax, etc. It also may happen that a single gateway, which supports several access technologies, is able to connect to different access networks. To benefit from the availability of different gateways and access networks with different characteristics for a PN user, an efficient methodology for gateway and access network selection is needed. In this work, we are motivated to design a generic architectural framework for selecting the best gateway(s) and access network(s) in a PN. Issues, such as characteristics of the gateway nodes and access networks, QoS requirements of the applications, mobility of gateway nodes, dynamism of the PN topology, etc., have been considered in designing the proposed framework. The main advantages of this framework is leveraging the benefits of different alternative solutions, in terms of overhead, efficiency, complexity, and user satisfaction.