On utilization efficiency of backbone bandwidth for a heterogeneous wireless network operator

To provide a comprehensive network access service to wireless users, a network operator may operate different types of wireless networks (such as GPRS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, UMTS, WiMAX and 3GPP LTE) simultaneously to become a heterogeneous wireless network operator, such as Vodafone and T-Mobile. With convenience of accessing wireless networks, ubiquitous services would stimulate the bandwidth expenditure in the network backbone. Lots of various demanded traffic from heterogeneous access networks may converge toward Internet through the common backbone in the operator. Efficiently utilizing the common backbone can offer a better quality of service to users and maximize the revenues for the operator. To our best knowledge, few studies had ever been made in such a contemporary wireless network environment in the past. In this study, we propose solutions to efficiently allocate the bandwidth for user requests and fully utilize the unused bandwidth in the network backbone owned by the heterogeneous wireless network operator. Our simulation results show that our scheme can increase the utilization of the backbone bandwidth, shorten the request completion time for users and generate more revenue for the operator.