The main goal of today’s wireless Service Providers (SPs) is to provide optimum and ubiquitous service for roaming users while maximizing the SPs own monetary profits. The fundamental objective is to support such requirements by providing solutions that are adaptive to varying conditions in highly mobile and heterogeneous, as well as dynamically changing wireless network infrastructures. This can only be achieved through well-designed management systems. Most techniques fail to utilize the knowledge gained from previously tested reconfiguration strategies on system and network behaviour. This dissertation presents a novel framework that automates the cooperation among a number of wireless SPs facing the challenge of meeting strict service demands for a large number of mobile users. The proposed work employs a novel policy-based system configuration model to automate the process of adapting new network policies. The proposed framework relies on the assistance of a real-time simulator that runs as a constant background process in order to continuously find optimal policy configurations for the SPs’ networks. To minimize the computational time needed to find these configurations, a modified tabu-search scheme is proposed. An objective is to efficiently explore the space of network configurations in order to find optimal network decisions and provide a service performance that adheres to contracted service level agreements. This framework also relies on a distributed Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring scheme. The proposed scheme relies on the efficient identification of candidate QoS monitoring users that can efficiently submit QoS related measurements on behalf of their neighbors. These candidate users are chosen according to their devices’ residual power and transmission capabilities and their estimated remaining service lifetime. Service monitoring users are then selected from these candidates using a novel user-to-user semantic similarity matching algorithm. This step ensures that the monitoring users are reporting on behalf of other users that are highly similar to them in terms of their mobility, used services and device profiles. Experimental results demonstrate the significant gains achieved in terms of the reduced traffic overhead and overall consumed users’ devices power while achieving a high monitoring accuracy, adaptation time speedup, base station load balancing, and individual providers’ payoffs.

The main goal of today’s wireless Service Providers (SPs) is to provide optimum and ubiquitous service for roaming users while maximizing the SPs own monetary profits. The fundamental objective is to support such requirements by providing solutions that are adaptive to varying conditions in highly mobile and heterogeneous, as well as dynamically changing wireless network infrastructures. This can only be achieved through well-designed management systems. Most techniques fail to utilize the knowledge gained from previously tested reconfiguration strategies on system and network behaviour. This dissertation presents a novel framework that automates the cooperation among a number of wireless SPs facing the challenge of meeting strict service demands for a large number of mobile users. The proposed work employs a novel policy-based system configuration model to automate the process of adapting new network policies. The proposed framework relies on the assistance of a real-time simulator that runs as a constant background process in order to continuously find optimal policy configurations for the SPs’ networks. To minimize the computational time needed to find these configurations, a modified tabu-search scheme is proposed. An objective is to efficiently explore the space of network configurations in order to find optimal network decisions and provide a service performance that adheres to contracted service level agreements. This framework also relies on a distributed Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring scheme. The proposed scheme relies on the efficient identification of candidate QoS monitoring users that can efficiently submit QoS related measurements on behalf of their neighbors. These candidate users are chosen according to their devices’ residual power and transmission capabilities and their estimated remaining service lifetime. Service monitoring users are then selected from these candidates using a novel user-to-user semantic similarity matching algorithm. This step ensures that the monitoring users are reporting on behalf of other users that are highly similar to them in terms of their mobility, used services and device profiles. Experimental results demonstrate the significant gains achieved in terms of the reduced traffic overhead and overall consumed users’ devices power while achieving a high monitoring accuracy, adaptation time speedup, base station load balancing, and individual providers’ payoffs.

Mobility management over heterogeneous wireless networks is becoming a major interest area as new technologies and services continue to proliferate within the wireless networking market. In this context, seamless mobility is considered to be crucial for ubiquitous computing. Service providers aim to increase the revenue and to improve users' satisfaction. However there are still many technical and architectural challenges to overcome before achieving the required interoperability and coexistence of heterogeneous wireless access networks. Indeed, the context of wireless networks is offering multiple and heterogeneous technologies (e.g. 2G to 4G, WiFi, Wimax, TETRA,...). On the one hand, this rich environment allows users to take profit from different capacities and coverage characteristics. Indeed, this diversity can provide users with high flexibility and allow them to seamlessly connect at any time and any where to the access technology that best fits their requirements. Additionally, cooperation between these different technologies can provide higher efficiency in the usage of the scarce wireless resources offering more economic systems for network providers. On the other hand, the heterogeneity of technologies and architectures and the multiplication of networks and service providers creates a complex environment where cooperation becomes challenging at different levels including and not limited to mobility management, radio resource provisioning, Quality of Service and security guarantees. This thesis is focusing on mobility management and mainly on decision making for Vertical handover within heterogeneous wireless network environments. After the analysis of the related state of the art, we first propose a reputation based approach that allows fast vertical handover decision making. A decision making scheme is then built on that approach. Network's reputation, is a new metric that can be gathered from previous users' experiences in the networks. We show that it is an efficient construct to speed up the vertical handover decision making thanks to anticipation functionalities. While the main objective remains guaranteeing the best Quality of Service and optimal radio resource utilization, economical aspects have also to be considered including cost minimization for users and revenue maximization for network providers. For this aim, we propose, in the second part of the thesis, a game theoretic based scheme that allows maximizing benefits for both networks and users. In this solution, each available network plays a Stackelberg game with a finite set of users, while users are playing a Nash game among themselves to share the limited radio resources. A Nash equilibrium point, that maximizes the user's utility and the service provider revenue, is found and used for admission control and vertical handover decision making. The analyses of the optimal bandwidth/prices and the revenue at the equilibrium point show that there are some possible policies to use according to user's requirements in terms of QoS and to network capacities. For instance, we pointed out that networks having same capacities and different reputation values should charge users with different prices which makes reputation management very important to attract users and maximize networks' revenue. In the third part of this thesis, we provide and discuss two different architectural and implementation solutions on which our proposed vertical handover decision mechanisms can be integrated. The first proposed architecture is a centralized one. It is based on the IEEE 802.21 standard to which some extensions are proposed. The second proposed architecture is distributed. It is based on an overlay control level composed of two virtualization layers able to make reasoning on behalf of physical entities within the system. This architecture allows higher flexibility especially for loosely coupled interconnected networks

<p>After more than two decades’ development, modern mobile cellular networks now have almost approached to the commercial level of fourth generation communication networks. For each of the mobile solutions, there are special attributes but also similarities compared to the other competitive solutions. We can also find relationships between the old generation solutions and the inheritors or innovations.</p><p>During the communicating session using any kind of existing mobile handset, the handover procedure is a very important one that may effect connection quality and also the phone call continuity. Nowadays, the mobile cellular networks have a trend to interact with LAN networks. They will co-exist and work together to support higher data rate over a wider coverage. Seamless handover proposals like Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) can support the heterogeneous handover between Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Wireless (Wi-Fi) Network. Several Media Independent Handover (MIH) proposals can handle the vertical handover in the hybrid mobile data network environment such like between wireless local area network (WLAN) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) by different solutions.</p>

After more than two decades’ development, modern mobile cellular networks now have almost approached to the commercial level of fourth generation communication networks. For each of the mobile solutions, there are special attributes but also similarities compared to the other competitive solutions. We can also find relationships between the old generation solutions and the inheritors or innovations. During the communicating session using any kind of existing mobile handset, the handover procedure is a very important one that may effect connection quality and also the phone call continuity. Nowadays, the mobile cellular networks have a trend to interact with LAN networks. They will co-exist and work together to support higher data rate over a wider coverage. Seamless handover proposals like Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) can support the heterogeneous handover between Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Wireless (Wi-Fi) Network. Several Media Independent Handover (MIH) proposals can handle the vertical handover in the hybrid mobile data network environment such like between wireless local area network (WLAN) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) by different solutions.

Mobile communication systems have continued to evolve by the release of new standards for HSPA and the release of new standards for LTE in release 8 and release 9. The new releases aim at providing higher data rates to accommodate the envisioned services of 3GPP in voice, data, image transmission, video, multimedia service and broadband services. Catering for a wide variety of services to satisfy the demands imposed on mobile networks by the user diversity and demanding applications, the air interface has been identified as the major bottleneck in the mobile networks. Network planning engineers and operators are deploying the new air interfaces in the same cell sites, which gives rise to several internetworking issues among the different air interfaces from radio resources management to service call continuity issues due to user's mobility and changing point of attachment. Deployment of different air interfaces coupled with traffic diversity requests further complicates the managements of the mobile networks. One of The main objectives of this research is to propose and evaluate solutions that address the internetworking of the different radio air interfaces in proposing a call admission control algorithm that can utilize different air interfaces capabilities and to determine which traffic types are better suited to be serviced by an interface. The proposed algorithm will consider the availability of the interface, the load of the network and the user equipment capabilities. Another main objective of this research is to propose and evaluate solutions that address changing the point of attachment of the users due to mobility in the form of handover algorithm. The proposed algorithm will consider the coverage of the node, direction and speed of the user, the network load, the air interface availability and the user equipment capabilities. Another main objective of this research is to design and implement a simulation system which includes all 3GPP standardized technologies. The simulation tool was designed as a discrete event simulation (DBS) system which includes all the standardized air interface technologies and services. The simulation tool was designed using Visual C# to take advantage of the object oriented capabilities of the Windows environment and libraries. The simulation tool was essential in evaluating the proposed algorithms in the first two objectives.

L’évolution des technologies réseaux sans fil, des terminaux mobiles ainsi que des contenus et des services créent des environnements hétérogènes de plus en plus complexes. Dans ce contexte, un compromis entre la mobilité, la transparence et la performance apparaît. Des utilisateurs mobiles, ayant différents profils et préférences, voudraient être toujours connectés au meilleur réseau à tout moment, sans avoir à se soucier des différentes transitions entre réseaux hétérogènes. Face à cette complexité, il parait nécessaire de proposer de nouvelles approches afin de rendre ces systèmes plus autonomes et de rendre les décisions de handover vertical plus efficaces. Cette thèse se concentre sur la gestion de mobilité verticale, plus précisément sur la prise de décision de handover vertical dans un environnement de réseaux hétérogènes sans fil. Après l’identification des différents paramètres de prise de décision et l’analyse de l’état de l’art relié à la gestion de la mobilité verticale, nous avons proposé un système de réputation qui permet de réduire les délais de prise de décision. La réputation d’un réseau est introduite comme une nouvelle métrique de prise de décision qui peut être recueillie à partir des expériences précédentes des utilisateurs sur ce réseau. Nous montrons que la réputation est une métrique efficace qui permet l’anticipation du handover et accélère la prise de décision. Bien que l’objectif principal soit de garantir la meilleure qualité de service et l’utilisation optimale des ressources radios, les aspects économiques doivent également être considérés, y compris la minimisation des coûts pour les utilisateurs et la maximisation des revenus pour les fournisseurs de services ou les opérateurs. Nous proposons alors, dans la deuxième partie de la thèse, un mécanisme de prise de décision basé sur la théorie des jeux. Ce dernier permet la maximisation des utilités des réseaux et des utilisateurs. Dans cette solution, chaque réseau disponible joue un jeu de Stackelberg avec un ensemble d’utilisateurs, tandis que les utilisateurs jouent un jeu de Nash entre eux pour partager les ressources radios limitées. Un point d’équilibre de Nash, qui maximise l’utilité de l’utilisateur et les revenus des fournisseurs de services, est trouvé et utilisé pour le contrôle d’admission et la prise de décision de handover vertical. Dans la troisième partie de cette thèse, nous proposons et discutons deux différentes solutions architecturales sur lesquelles nos mécanismes de prise de décision proposés peuvent être intégrés. La première architecture proposée est basée sur la norme IEEE 802.21 à laquelle nous proposons certaines extensions. La seconde architecture proposée est basée sur un niveau de contrôle composé de deux couches de virtualisation. La virtualisation est assurée via des agents capables de faire un raisonnement et de prendre des décisions pour le compte d’entités physiques qu’ils représentent au sein du système. Cette architecture permet une plus grande flexibilité / Mobility management over heterogeneous wireless networks is becoming a major interest area as new technologies and services continue to proliferate within the wireless networking market. In this context, seamless mobility is considered to be crucial for ubiquitous computing. Service providers aim to increase the revenue and to improve users’ satisfaction. However there are still many technical and architectural challenges to overcome before achieving the required interoperability and coexistence of heterogeneous wireless access networks. Indeed, the context of wireless networks is offering multiple and heterogeneous technologies (e.g. 2G to 4G, WiFi, Wimax, TETRA,...). On the one hand, this rich environment allows users to take profit from different capacities and coverage characteristics. Indeed, this diversity can provide users with high flexibility and allow them to seamlessly connect at any time and any where to the access technology that best fits their requirements. Additionally, cooperation between these different technologies can provide higher efficiency in the usage of the scarce wireless resources offering more economic systems for network providers. On the other hand, the heterogeneity of technologies and architectures and the multiplication of networks and service providers creates a complex environment where cooperation becomes challenging at different levels including and not limited to mobility management, radio resource provisioning, Quality of Service and security guarantees. This thesis is focusing on mobility management and mainly on decision making for Vertical handover within heterogeneous wireless network environments. After the analysis of the related state of the art, we first propose a reputation based approach that allows fast vertical handover decision making. A decision making scheme is then built on that approach. Network’s reputation, is a new metric that can be gathered from previous users’ experiences in the networks. We show that it is an efficient construct to speed up the vertical handover decision making thanks to anticipation functionalities. While the main objective remains guaranteeing the best Quality of Service and optimal radio resource utilization, economical aspects have also to be considered including cost minimization for users and revenue maximization for network providers. For this aim, we propose, in the second part of the thesis, a game theoretic based scheme that allows maximizing benefits for both networks and users. In this solution, each available network plays a Stackelberg game with a finite set of users, while users are playing a Nash game among themselves to share the limited radio resources. A Nash equilibrium point, that maximizes the user’s utility and the service provider revenue, is found and used for admission control and vertical handover decision making. The analyses of the optimal bandwidth/prices and the revenue at the equilibrium point show that there are some possible policies to use according to user’s requirements in terms of QoS and to network capacities. For instance, we pointed out that networks having same capacities and different reputation values should charge users with different prices which makes reputation management very important to attract users and maximize networks’ revenue. In the third part of this thesis, we provide and discuss two different architectural and implementation solutions on which our proposed vertical handover decision mechanisms can be integrated. The first proposed architecture is a centralized one. It is based on the IEEE 802.21 standard to which some extensions are proposed. The second proposed architecture is distributed. It is based on an overlay control level composed of two virtualization layers able to make reasoning on behalf of physical entities within the system. This architecture allows higher flexibility especially for loosely coupled interconnected networks

Résumé Dans les futurs réseaux mobiles, différentes technologies d'accès radio, telles que GSM, UMTS, WiMAX, WIFI coexisteront. Pour réaliser un handover vertical sans couture (handover inter-RAT) entre ces technologies, des architectures d'interconnexion et des moyens pour gérer le handover inter-RAT sont proposés. Afin de proposer une solution efficace, nous allons d'abord analyser la solution " Fast MIPv6 (FMIPv6) ". Les analyses numériques démontrent les défauts de FMIPv6 et les exigences de handover inter-RAT. En considérant une architecture de couplage intégré (integrated coupling), nous proposons une nouvelle sous-couche commune d'interconnexion (IW sublayer) au niveau 2 sur le RNC (Radio Network Controller) et le MS (Mobile Station) pour offrir un handover inter-RAT sans couture entre les systèmes UMTS et WiMAX. Cette sous-couche IW permet d'éliminer la perte des paquets et de réduire la latence de handover. Ces paramètres sont des éléments importants communs à la plupart des scénarios de handover inter-RAT. Cette sous-couche IW est également étendue à l'architecture de couplage serré (tight coupling). En outre, deux types de solution basées sur TCP Proxy, qui utilisent la sous-couche IW, sont également introduites sur le RNC pour résoudre deux problèmes rencontrés avec l'utilisation du trafic TCP dans un handover inter-RAT: le " BDP mismatch " et le " spurious RTO (Retransmission TimeOut) ". Le premier type de solution basé sur TCP Proxy est adapté aux scénarios où le handover est fréquent, tandis que le deuxième type de solution basé sur TCP Proxy est conçu pour les scénarios où le handover est occasionnel. Par rapport aux autres solutions de handover vertical, les résultats de simulation montrent que notre deuxième type de solution a le mérite de maintenir la pile de protocole TCP existante inchangée. Les solutions classiques de handover inter-RAT sont généralement réalisées au niveau 2 ou au-dessus, parce qu'il n'y a pas de module commun à la couche physique pour les deux systèmes, ou en raison de la distance géographique des systèmes. Mais pour les futurs systèmes LTE et WiMAX dans à l'architecture " integrated coupling ", ce n'est pas le cas, parce qu'ils ont un certain nombre de techniques physiques communes, telles que MIMO et OFDM. Deux modules nommés " precoder " et " combiner " sont proposés respectivement sur les BSs (stations de base) et sur le MS au niveau physique afin d'exploiter au maximum la diversité des deux réseaux d'accès radio et de réaliser un " soft " handover inter-RAT. Ce " soft " handover inter-RAT au niveau physique est entièrement nouveau à notre connaissance.

A finales de los años noventa, y al comienzo del nuevo milenio, las redes inalámbricas han evolucionado bastante, pasando de ser sólo una tecnología prometedora para convertirse en un requisito para las actividades cotidianas en las sociedades desarrolladas. La infraestructura de transporte también ha evolucionado, ofreciendo comunicación a bordo para mejorar la seguridad vial y el acceso a contenidos de información y entretenimiento. Los requisitos de los usuarios finales se han hecho dependientes de la tecnología, lo que significa que sus necesidades de conectividad han aumentado debido a los diversos requisitos de las aplicaciones que se ejecutan en sus dispositivos móviles, tales como tabletas, teléfonos inteligentes, ordenadores portátiles o incluso ordenadores de abordo (On-Board Units (OBUs)) dentro de los vehículos. Para cumplir con dichos requisitos de conectividad, y teniendo en cuenta las diferentes redes inalámbricas disponibles, es necesario adoptar técnicas de Vertical Handover (VHO) para cambiar de red de forma transparente y sin necesidad de intervención del usuario. El objetivo de esta tesis es desarrollar algoritmos de decisión (Vertical Handover Decision Algorithms (VHDAs)) eficientes y escalables, optimizados para el contexto de las redes vehiculares. En ese sentido se ha propuesto, desarrollado y probado diferentes algoritmos de decisión basados en la infraestructura disponible en las actuales, y probablemente en las futuras, redes inalámbricas y redes vehiculares. Para ello se han combinado diferentes técnicas, métodos computacionales y modelos matemáticos, con el fin de garantizar una conectividad apropiada, y realizando el handover hacia las redes más adecuadas de manera a cumplir tanto con los requisitos de los usuarios como los requisitos de las aplicaciones. Con el fin de evaluar el contexto, se han utilizado diferentes herramientas para obtener información variada, como la disponibilidad de la red, el estado de la red, la geolocalización / Márquez Barja, JM. (2012). SCALABLE AND EFFICIENT VERTICAL HANDOVER DECISION ALGORITHMS IN VEHICULAR NETWORK CONTEXTS [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17869 / Palancia

In this research oriented master’s thesis we have proposed a future vision of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) by utilizing the novel concept of HWA (Heterogeneous Wireless Access). Our proposal is backed by the investigation of the results of experiments conducted at CERES (Centre for Research on Embedded Systems), Halmstad University, Sweden to evaluate the quality of communication for V2V and V2I by using the IEEE 802.11p standard. We have also identified the expected scenarios with need of any other communication technology in replacement of IEEE 802.11p for V2V and V2I communication. We have also investigated the relevant research projects, experiments and their results on the basis of predefined constraints. In the investigated research projects the concept of HWA has been correlated with our proposal of HWA for ITS. We have identified that for smooth integration of any communication technology with IEEE 802.11p, an efficient and smart vertical handover protocol or method will be required. We have presented a blue print of a custom designed vertical handover technique which can be implemented for future ITS with further enhancements and experimental evaluations. We have also evaluated the worst case scenarios to assess the suitability of the HWA for the ITS. We proposed few solutions based on the evaluation of communication scenarios for the integration of IEEE 802.11p with other wireless communication technologies. Finally we have provided some conclusions and suggested future researches which must be conducted to realize the dream of ITS with support of HWA.