An Evidential Approach for Network Interface Selection in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

When several networks (e.g., Wi-Fi, UMTS, and LTE) cover the same region, the mobile terminals that are equipped with multiple network interfaces provide the possibility for mobile end-users to select their believed best network. This is known as the network selection problem, which is a decision making problem with multiple criteria (network conditions, service requirements, terminal characteristics, and user needs). Many network selection solutions using different mathematical theories have been proposed in the literature to allow the best connectivity for applications, users, and terminals. Unfortunately, most approaches for the network selection do not make effective selection decisions, since they are vulnerable to the uncertainty and imprecision related to network state information. In this paper, we investigate the belief functions theory to devise an efficient lightweight uncertainty- aware network interface selection scheme. We provide analytical studies and simulation experiments to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed solution.