Exploiting Hotspot-2.0 for Traffic Offloading in Mobile Networks

WiFi networks can offload data traffic from congested cellular networks in a cost-effective way. However, it is difficult to perform WiFi offloading in mobile environments due to the complicated and time consuming access procedure of WiFi networks. In this article, we first investigate mobile traffic offloading by leveraging the HS-2.0 technique, which greatly simplifies the access procedure and provides a novel signaling diagram to enable automatic association and seamless roaming for mobile users. We then compare the legacy HS-1.0 with HS-2.0, and study the impacts of HS-2.0 on mobile traffic offloading by considering the pedestrian case and the drive-thru Internet case, respectively. We develop an HS-2.0 traffic offloading prototype and provide useful results through empirical measurements. Finally, we show the research issues for HS-2.0 mobile traffic offloading.