A PROMETHEE approach for network selection in heterogeneous wireless environment

In a heterogeneous wireless network environment always best connected concept requires the selection of an optimal access network. Selection of a non-optimal network can result in undesirable effects such as higher costs and poor service experience. In this paper an attempt is made to find a solution for network selection by using two multiple attribute decision making (MADM) methods namely Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE ) and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The AHP method is used to determine weights of the criteria and the PROMETHEE method is used to rank the networks. Four traffic classes namely conversational, streaming, and interactive and background are included to illustrate the method. The performance of PROMETHEE is validated by comparing with AHP in terms of consistency, ranking abnormality, robustness and accuracy. Simulation results show that PROMETHEE is slightly preferable to AHP in network selection.