Optimizing Network Selection to Support End-User QOS Requirements for Next Generation Networks

Wireless systems in NGN, will integrate different network access technologies, e.g. wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network ( UTRAN), and WiMax, Moreover, this integrated wireless system, will have to handle diverse types of traffics, such as data traffics ( e-mail, web browsing, ftp), voice traffic (VOIP), and multimedia traffics ( video conferencing, Online TV, Online Games, ..... etc). This paper focus on providing QoS management, to support end user requirements in mobile environments, one of the most challenging problems here, is the network selection, to choose network from a number of available networks in a heterogeneous system, to serve a connection requested by a mobile user with acceptable level of QoS and good network utilization. We propose an architecture that combines QoS Broker and network Selection. The QoS Broker will monitor the QoS performance in all the time for each wireless network, then the result of this monitoring will be inform of analytical statistics of all the QoS parameters in each network and for each traffic class. The user request for specific service usually depend on available bandwidth and the service QoS parameters, if any network with sufficient traffic bandwidth and QoS parameters, that matches the user request, then the connection to that network will be triggered and the connection will be established with optimum selection for both end-user and network operator.