Energy-Efficient Vertical Handovers

Abstract: Recent studies have shown that there are currently more than 1.08 billion of Smartphones in the world, with around 89% of them used throughout the day. On average each of these users transfers more than 450 Mbytes per month via either a cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. So far it has been up to the user to decide which one of these two networks to use at each particular moment. In this master’s thesis, the potential energy savings that could be achieved by means of automating the choice of network interface are explored. This way, the user equipment itself would be able to initiate handovers from one radio access technology to another depending on each particular service and on the environmental conditions, and hence it could extend its battery life. The work has focused in energy efficient vertical handovers (VHOs) between Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and Wi-Fi networks. The rapid growth and increasing interest in LTE networks have been the main reasons why these networks have been chosen over Third Generation Mobile Networks. Nevertheless this work can be easily extended to other radio access technologies such as WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) or UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System). During the thesis project, the potential energy savings via VHOs depending on the type of service have been studied, as well as the different processes involved in a handover decision process. In order to do so, an energy consumption profile of each interface has been built, the different services have been modeled, and a heterogeneous scenario with Wi-Fi and LTE networks has been simulated. The thesis presents how these savings change within each service and with the environmental conditions (network load, interferences). The results show that large energy savings can be achieved. Nevertheless, the potential savings for each different user device can significantly differ. The VHO decision process includes two main aspects that need further study: investigating energy efficient ways of discovering accessible Wi-Fi access points and measuring the available throughput in each network at the moment of the decision. In addition, within LTE-Advanced and HetNets (Heterogeneous Networks), a lot of research regarding how LTE operators can offload traffic to smaller networks is being performed. These smaller networks consist basically of LTE micro cells and Wi-Fi. Both the energy savings and the potential energy expenses of offloading different kinds of traffic to a Wi-Fi network were also studied in this master’s thesis project, using the same approach described in the previous two paragraphs.