Green Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Chapter 4Multi-homing for a Green Downlink

In a heterogeneous wireless medium, downlink multi-homing radio resource allocation can save power for network operators. In this context, two application scenarios can be distinguished. In the first scenario, the MT aggregates the offered radio resources from different networks to support a single (data hungry) application, while in the second scenario, the MT runs different applications using the radio resources assigned to different radio interfaces. In this chapter, we discuss the challenging issues associated with each application scenario. Two radio resource allocation mechanisms are presented to address the corresponding challenges.

4.1 Introduction

The increasing demand for wireless communication services and the wide deployment of wireless communication infrastructures have led to high power consumption in the wireless access networks. Due to financial and environmental concerns, wireless network service providers have shown a growing interest in deploying power-efficient wireless communication infrastructures. Given today's heterogeneous wireless medium with overlapped coverage from different networks and the multi-homing capabilities of MTs, green multi-homing radio resource allocation in the downlink can lead to power saving for the network operators. Green multi-homing techniques can be adopted in two application scenarios. The first scenario aggregates the offered radio resources from different networks to support in ...