Green Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Chapter 5Multi-homing for a Green Uplink

In this chapter, green uplink communications are investigated for battery-constrained MTs with service quality requirements and multi-homing capabilities. A heterogeneous wireless medium is considered, where MTs communicate with BSs/APs of different networks with overlapped coverage. Two application scenarios are studied, namely data uploading and video streaming. First, we give an introduction that summarizes the challenging issues that should be considered while designing a green uplink multi-homing radio resource allocation mechanism for both data uploading and video streaming. Then, two radio resource allocation mechanisms are presented to address the associated challenging issues with both application scenarios.

5.1 Introduction

The past decade has witnessed significant advances in the design of MTs and the offered communication services for mobile users. In particular, MTs are currently equipped with processing and display capabilities that enable them to support voice, video and data calls. In addition, MTs are capable of establishing simultaneous communications with BSs and APs of different networks, through multiple radio interfaces and using the multi-homing feature [154]. Utilizing multiple radio interfaces of an MT to support video or data transmission through multi-homing service can improve service quality in many aspects [155, 156]. Transmitting (data or video) packets over multiple networks (i) increases the amount of ...