Mobile Data Offloading for Streaming-Class Traffic with QoS Guarantee

Faced with the tremendous increase in the amount of data traffic and associated congestion, mobile network operators are moving towards Heterogeneous networks (HetNets), in the process of expanding network capacity. Offloading data traffic onto Wi-Fi in order to avoid congestion in the backbone is an important step in the evolution of HetNets. On-the-spot and delayed offloading have been widely studied in the literature. This paper proposes an offloading algorithm which has low computational complexity. The proposed algorithm offloads data based on a balking function which is dependent on present network condition. Using extensive simulations, the authors demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves reduction in mean transmission delay without sacrificing much on the offloading efficiency. This technique is more efficient and applicable to real-time traffic, like live streaming video and audio, which has short and stringent delay requirements or deadlines.