Network discovery approach in heterogeneous radio access networks

Abstract

The emerging future heterogeneous wireless networks intend to provide a variety of adaptable services to mobile and nomadic users by using integrated heterogeneous network infrastructure. These networks are envisioned as the integration of different existing wireless network technologies such as WLAN, WiMAX, 2G, 2.5G, 3G, Bluetooth, etc., and future wireless network technologies. To integrate different network into a single heterogeneous network, the mobile station/user equipment (MS/UE) must discover all the available radio access networks ahead of time, select the appropriate network from the available radio access networks (RANs) and then seamlessly hand over the session to the desired/chosen network. This research paper presents a novel hybrid approach for network discovery, where the network will broadcast the updated network information using cell broadcast center (CBC) to the MS/UE and the MS/UE may also enquire from the network the additional information regarding the available networks, as opposed to centralized technique used in the existing cellular networks. The proposed solution suggests a network information repository (NIR) embedded in the core network, having the information of all the available radio access networks (RANs) in a specific location. The NIR will be populated and updated by the reporting agents (RAs) which are normal MS/UEs