A Novel RAT Virtualization System with Network-Initiated RAT Selection between LTE and WLAN

Various radio access technology (RAT) selection methods between LTE and wireless LAN (WLAN) have been proposed, which aim to improve the capacity of the cellular network and to improve user satisfaction through mobile network operators. However, studies from the viewpoint of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) have not yet been investigated sufficiently. We propose a novel RAT virtualization system suitable for MVNO composed of a new network-initiated RAT selection method and RAT selection algorithms. The system conceals a change of IPs associated with a change of RATs and offers a context-aware virtualized RAT for the application server and user application. We demonstrate a new RAT selection method by developing a prototype of the proposed RAT selection system. We also evaluate a system-level performance by using a network simulator (NS-3) and show that our proposed algorithm outperforms conventional algorithms in terms of the WLAN usage ratio and user satisfaction.