Hybrid Wireless Access for Vehicular Networking: Integrating 3G and Metro-Scale WiFi

We investigate a hybrid wireless access network design that integrate 3G and WiFi networks, specifically targeting vehicular mobility. The goal is to shift the load from the expensive 3G network to the less expensive WiFi network without hurting the user experience. As a test platform we choose a nationwide 3G network and a commercially operated metroscale WiFi network. We show that over a wide geographic region and under vehicular mobility, these networks exhibit different throughput and coverage characteristics, The characteristics are often complementary and can be judiciously exploited for the hybrid design. Instead of simply striping data over two network connections, we develop a utility and cost-based formulation that decides the right amount of load that can be put on the 3G network to maximize user’s benefit. We develop and experiment with a scheduler to do this. We show that the hybrid design is able to deliver much superior mobile video streaming experience for the user while reducing the load on the 3G network by three-fourth.