Cooperative joint radio resource management in wireless heterogeneous networks

This paper presents a cooperative joint radio resource management (JRRM) mechanism for efficient integration of different radio access technologies (RATs). Increasing number of wireless service providers (operators) are competing to expand their coverage and attract more users, and the number of wireless service users are rapidly growing. This highlights the need to design an efficient scalable radio resource management mechanism that could satisfy the requirements of both operators and users at the same time. In this paper, we present a cooperative framework based on the concept of producer-consumer interaction in market place. In the proposed mechanism, resource management tasks are split between network and user. It satisfies the always-best-connected criteria for mobile users based on their preferences. The various components, their roles and interactions in the proposed framework are detailed in the paper. A proof-of-concept implementation of the cooperative JRRM mechanism is carried out. Its performance in terms of users' service quality and handoff frequency is studied through simulation. A sharp decrease in handoff frequency is demonstrated in the presence of large number of mobile users.