Signaling-based service quality adaptation in heterogeneous networks

Various heterogeneous access networks are being converged toward an IP-based core network. In the converged network, it is essential to provide seamless service quality for multimedia services using a situation-aware signaling mechanism for selecting an appropriate access network that can support the desired service quality. Although many signaling mechanisms have been proposed, most of them turned out to be complex and insufficient for seamless service quality in the converged network. In this paper, we first analyze existing signaling mechanisms for service quality, identify key issues on service quality adaptation, and propose desired signaling features for the converged network. We then propose an efficient situation-aware signaling mechanism. Simulation results are also presented to show that the proposed mechanism works well in heterogeneous networks.