Intelligent Multi-Radio Access Based on Markov Decision Process
Jiandong Xie, Ying‐Chang Liang, Yiyang Pei, Jun Fang, Li Wang · 2017
Today multiple radio access technologies (RATs) coexist in wireless networks. Multi-mode mobile terminals (MMTs) which can switch between networks with different RATs can enjoy enhanced quality of service (QoS) by exploring the diversity among different radio access networks (RANs). Usually, it has been assumed in literature that an MMT can access only one network at a time. Multi-Radio Access (MRA) is a technology that allows an MMT to transmit and receive data via multiple RANs simultaneously. With MRA, users can combine the data streams from multiple networks to meet their throughput requirements and enjoy customized QoS. In this paper, we consider an MMT with MRA technology in a heterogeneous network environment. It is assumed that the connection session of the MMT will spread over multiple handover windows and that the MMT is allowed to switch from the present set of connected RANs to another set at each handover window. We are interested in designing an intelligent network switching strategy which maximizes the average cumulative utility function of the MMT. Taking into account the dynamics of the heterogeneous networks, we model the network selection problem as a Markov decision process (MDP). By using the value iteration algorithm, we obtain the optimal switching strategy. Simulation results show that the MDP method provides higher average cumulative utility function and higher average rate of minimum throughput satisfaction than greedy method.