An efficient wireless network discovery scheme for heterogeneous access environments

Purpose: Several new network types have emerged over the last couple of years. Many of these networks are being connected together to provide mobile users with the capability of staying always connected to the Internet which requires seamless transitions from one network to another without causing interruption to on-going connections. To maintain connectivity during handoff, all the networks that are accessible to the mobile station need to be known. The paper aims to propose a novel energy-efficient network discovery approach that enables fast discovery and selection of available access networks. Design/methodology/approach: The performance of the proposed approach over an actual network testbed consisting of heterogeneous networks (such as wireless local area, cellular) is evaluated. Findings: It was found that the approach yields between 12.4 and 19.1 per cent improvement in battery power consumption over other network discovery approaches. Originality/value: The paper proposes and implements a novel scheme to discover wireless networks in a multi-access environment consisting of heterogeneous networking technologies.