Always Best Connected - Access Network Discovery and Selection

With the increased number of access networks available at different locations complementing each other as throughput, the mobile devices have to be able to automatically connect to the best access network in terms of momentary QoS available and costs based on availability of the accesses in the vicinity of the mobile device at the specific locations.

OpenEPC provides the means for access network discovery and selection either through the assistance of the operator or directly from the mobile device.

In this scenario a user is connected to the OpenEPC platform through one access network. When the momentary preferences of the operator are modified from the network side (through ANDSF GUI) or the location of the mobile device has changed, a new set of inter-system mobility policies and discovery information is transmitted to the UE.

The UE monitors the networks available in its vicinity and when the connectivity possibilities change, it evaluates the information received from the ANDSF and makes local policy decisions if other accesses have higher priority and then it executes automatically the access network selection to that access.

The selection scenario is tightly coupled with the seamless vertical handover. As to perceive the effects of the access network selection mechanism the OpenEPC real-time applications can be activated in parallel to the here described scenario.