Design an interface/network selection mechanism for multi-interface FMIPv6 protocol

Abstract

Current mobile devices are often equipped with several network interfaces, which may be of different access technologies, both wireless and cellular. Users are looking to improve their ability to connect to the internet and maintain connectivity everywhere and anytime. To this end, one of the main objectives of the next generation networks will be heterogeneity in the wireless access environment in which a mobile terminal will be able to connect to multiple radio networks simultaneously. For these reasons, interface/network selection and efficient load balancing mechanisms among different types of networks will be required to achieve high-speed connectivity with seamless mobility. Game theory is a mathematical tool developed to understand competitive situations in which rational decision makers interact to achieve their objectives. Game theory naturally becomes a useful and powerful tool to research this kind of problems. This paper propose a novel interface/network selection mechanism, which is an extension to the Multi-interface Fast-handover Mobile IPv6 protocol [5]. The mechanism not only enhance the quality of the received traffic, but improves the ability of the user and/or the application to dynamically influence the interface selection during the operation of the mobile device.