Load balancing and flow management under user mobility in heterogeneous wireless networks

The utilization and size of today's wireless networks is continuously increasing, as more and more wireless communication technologies and connected devices are being added. As the use of multiple communication technologies is supported by modern devices, efforts have been made to allow these devices to utilize simultaneously and handover between different technologies. However, existing management frameworks and standards lack the intelligence to provide fine-grained network-wide optimizations. This despite the potential of dramatically increasing overall network performance (e.g., throughput) and user experience. To this extent, we present a multi-technology load balancing approach that can manage devices and steer traffic across different wireless technologies, in order to maximize the global throughput. This dynamic approach can be deployed on top of existing solutions and takes into account the specific characteristics of wireless networks and the mobility of stations. We present a mathematical problem formulation of load balancing traffic and devices across different wireless technologies. We demonstrate its ability to significantly increase network-wide throughput and meet the demands of the users.