The Journal of Systems and Software 92 (2014) 143–156 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Journal of Systems and Software j ourna l ho mepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jss A MIH-based approach for best network selection in heterogeneous wireless networks Nouri Omheni a , Faouzi Zarai a , Mohammad S. Obaidat b,* , Ikram Smaoui a , Lotfi Kamoun a a LETI Laboratory, University of Sfax, Tunisia b Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ 07764, USA a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 14 November 2012 Received in revised form 21 January 2014 Accepted 21 January 2014 Available online 14 February 2014 Keywords: Heterogeneous wireless networks Media independent handover Best network selection a b s t r a c t In the next generation wireless networks, different technologies belonging to one or more operators should be integrated to form a heterogeneous environment based on an IP core network infrastructure. This ensures user mobility and service continuity by maintaining connections when switching between various technologies and it introduces new resources and possibilities for applications. In this context, an automatic interface selection based on instantaneous and practical constraints and user preferences (Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, available resources, security, power consumption, etc.) is there- fore required. The different network selection and handover schemes proposed in the literature can be classified into three approaches according to who is responsible for making the handover decision: the terminal, the network or by a cooperation between both of them. However, these approaches keep pre- senting some drawbacks; namely the problem of resources management and network load balancing whenever the selection is controlled by the mobile terminal (MT) and the problem of scalability and unknown operator’s management policy whenever the selection is rather controlled by the network. In this article, first we propose a MIH based approach for handover initiation and preparation for heterogeneous wireless network. The proposed framework is based on the principals of IEEE 802.21 for context information gathering and optimized handover decision making. Second, we propose a new architecture and new network selection scheme that explicitly take into account the current resource usage and the user preferences. Furthermore, our solution ensures the selection of the most suitable network for each flow while taking into consideration its expectations in terms of QoS. A feasibility study of implementing a new architecture on a single MT is evaluated by using typical scenarios and using various algorithms. Thanks to the introduced function entities and modules in the proposed architecture, network utilization balancing and user and application expectations, which are successfully assured without operator intervention. Performance analysis shows that the proposed algorithm best meets the common quality requirements. © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The wireless network landscape is changing gradually from homogeneous to heterogeneous and future generation networks. In a homogeneous environment, network selection is considered as handover initiation stage. It decides if the handover will occur or not, and over which cell to redirect calls. Traditionally, it represents the need for horizontal handover to happen when the signal strength of the serving base station go down below a certain threshold value. In a heterogeneous environment, mobile terminals equipped with multiple interfaces must be able to select the most suitable access link among the available alternatives * Corresponding author. E-mail address: obaidat@monmouth.edu (M.S. Obaidat). including GPRS, WCDMA/HSPA, LTE, WiMAX, and WLAN. More- over, this kind of architecture is expected to support a number of applications and services with different QoS requirements to be provisioned to terminals and with different degrees of multi-mode capabilities to access the available networks (Nguyen-Vuong et al., 2008; Perez-Romero et al., 2007). Each mobile station and radio access network is characterized by the specific air interface technology, cell size, multiple access scheme, coverage, mobility type, among others (Weiss and Jondral, 2004). The spreading of these wireless networks has encouraged the emergency of many applications such as Voice over IP (VoIP), video on demand, and web applications that take advantages of the mobility. However, a single technology can hardly satisfy all the applications expectations (required delay, jitter, bandwidth, bit error rate, security level, etc.). Therefore, the integration of different wireless technologies in a heterogeneous environment has offered 0164-1212/$ – see front matter © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2014.01.031