As the coverage of modern wireless technologies expands, today’s mobile phones and PDAs often have a range of heterogeneous networks to which they may connect. It would benefit mobile applications to use the network which best corresponds to its need.
However, making the handovers between networks transparent to allow communication sessions to survive is not trivial as the TCP/IP suite, used by most networking applications today, was initially not designed with mobility in mind.
A Vinnova founded research project at Saab (together with associates1) has found that it could prove advantageous to monitor network quality together with the application’s needs and make intelligent decisions regarding what network to use. An algorithm for network classification and evaluation has been proposed.
This thesis examined prerequisites and methods for implementing adaptive network connectivity through transparent handovers for mobile devices, resulting in a tentative model to demonstrate the mentioned research results.
The prototype, implemented as a user space middleware, utilizes UDP encapsulation and a per-packet basis link evaluation, resulting in small overhead and fast context adaptation. Link monitoring ensures that server and clients are constantly updated about network quality and availability.
The prototype yielded transparent handovers between networks, with short handover delays, at the cost of reduced performance for fast networks.
Source: KTH
Author: Waltersson, Roland
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