Performance and Energy Conservation of 3GPP IFOM Protocol for Dual Connectivity in Heterogeneous LTE–WLAN Network

Abstract

For the 5th Generation networks, Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is considering standardization of various solutions for traffic aggregation using licensed and unlicensed spectrum, to meet the rising data demands. IP Flow Mobility (IFOM) is a multi-access connectivity solution/protocol standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force and 3GPP in Release 10. It enables concurrent access for an User Equipment (UE) to Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). IFOM enabled UEs (IeUs) have multiple interfaces to connect to HetNets. They can have concurrent flows with different traffic types over these networks and can seamlessly switch the flows from one network to the other. In this paper, we focus on two objectives. First is to investigate the performance parameters, e.g. throughput, latency, tunnelling overhead, packet loss, energy cost, etc. of IeUs in HetNets of LTE and WLAN. We have proposed a novel mechanism to maximize the throughput of IeUs achieving a significant throughput gain with low latency for the IeUs. We have explored further and observed a throughput-energy trade-off for low data rate flows. To address this, we also propose a smart energy efficient and throughput optimization algorithm for the IeUs, resulting in a substantial reduction in energy cost, while maintaining the high throughput at lower latency and satisfying the Quality of Service requirements of the IeUs.

KEYWORDS:

• Blocking probability
• Dual connectivity
• Energy conservation
• Heterogeneous Networks
• IFOM
• Latency
• QoS
• Throughput maximization

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Part of this work has been supported by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DietY) under the project title “Dual Connectivity LTE-WiFi Solution for Broadband Wireless Networks”.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shubhada Gadgil

Shubhada Rajesh Gadgil has a PhD from the Electrical Engineering Department of IIT Bombay. She works with the LTE-Wi-Fi Interworking group of the EE Department, IIT Bombay and for the project funded by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY). She is currently the Head of Computer Technology Department, Vartak Polytechnic, Vasai, Maharashtra. She has graduated from Pune University with merit rank. She completed her MTech in electronics engineering from VJTI and received the ISTE L&T National Award for the best MTech thesis completed at VJTI and SAMEER, IIT Bombay. She has published papers in the flagship national & international conferences. She has worked as Session Chair for IEEE and International conferences. She has textbooks and laboratory manuals published for the Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education, Mumbai for microprocessors, operating systems and advanced microprocessors.

Shashi Ranjan

Shashi Ranjan is currently pursuing his PhD from the Electrical Department, IIT Bombay. He completed his MTech from IIT Bombay in 2013 and BTech from BIT Mesra in 2010. During the 2013–2015 period, he worked as Project Research Engineer at IIT Bombay on the project Dual Connectivity LTE-WiFi Solution for Broadband Wireless, funded by Department of Electronics & Information Technology (DeitY). He has also actively participated and contributed towards Telecommunications Standards Development Society India (TSDSI) and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). He has been IIT Bombay representative at 3GPP RAN2 and SA6 Working Group. His research interests include next generation networks, fog computing, mobile communications and others. Email: [email protected]

Abhay Karandikar

Abhay Karandikar is currently Director & Professor at IIT Kanpur and formerly Dean (Faculty Affairs) and Institute Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He was the Head of the Department from January 2012 to January 2015. He is the coordinator of Tata Teleservices IIT Bombay Center for Excellence in Telecom (TICET), National Center of Excellence in Technology for Internal Security. He spearheaded a national effort in setting up Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), India’s standards body for telecom with participation of all stakeholder. Prof Karandikar is the founding member and Chairman of TSDSI. Currently, he is working as a consultant to provide technical expertise in design and implementation of BharatNet, Government of India’s flagship initiative under Digital India programme. Dr Karandikar has several patents issued and pending, contributions to IEEE, 3GPP standards, contributed chapters in books and large number of papers in international journals and conferences to his credit. Dr Karandikar was awarded with IEEE SA’s Standards Medallion in December 2016 in New Jersey. His team also won Mozilla Open Innovation challenge prize in March 2017. He is a two-time recipient of award for excellence in teaching at IIT Bombay – in 2006 and 2011. He is co-author of papers which won the Best paper awards in ACM MobiHoc 2009, Workshop on Indoor and Outdoor Small Cells WiOpt2014 and finalist for the best paper award in IEEE LCN 2012 and IEEE NCC 2014 conferences. Email: [email protected]