Access network discovery and selection in the future wireless communication

The future wireless telecommunication environment is characterized by the co-existence of a multitude of wireless networks such as LTE, LTE-Advanced, UMTS, WiMAX, WiFi etc. In order to be able to offer the best connectivity, according to the requirements of the users and to the preferences of the operator, a novel functionality was introduced in the core network and in the mobile devices for access network discovery and selection. This paper introduces this functionality as standardized in the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core (EPC), highlighting its main concepts and technical scenarios. Further, a set of novel optimizations are presented and evaluated, followed by the description of their implementation as part of the Fraunhofer FOKUS OpenEPC toolkit.