Optimal network selection in heterogeneous wireless multimedia networks

The complementary characteristics of different wireless networks make it attractive to integrate a wide range of radio access technologies. Most of previous work on integrating heterogeneous wireless networks concentrates on network layer quality of service (QoS), such as blocking probability and utilization, as design criteria. However, from a user's point of view, application layer QoS, such as multimedia distortion, is an important issue. In this paper, we propose an optimal distributed network selection scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks considering multimedia application layer QoS. Specifically, we formulate the integrated network as a restless bandit system. With this stochastic optimization formulation, the optimal network selection policy is indexable, meaning that the network with the lowest index should be selected. The proposed scheme can be applicable to both tight coupling and loose coupling scenarios in the integration of heterogeneous wireless networks. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme.