Application-based QoS evaluation of heterogeneous networks

Heterogeneous wireless networks expand the network capacity and coverage by leveraging the network architecture and resources in a dynamic fashion. However, the presence of different communication technologies makes the Quality of Service (QoS) evaluation, management, and monitoring of these networks very challenging. Each communication technology has its own characteristics while the applications that utilize them have their specific QoS requirements. Although, the communication technologies have different performance assessment parameters, the applications using these radio access networks have the same QoS requirements. As a result, it would be easier to evaluate the QoS of the access networks and the overall network configuration depending on the performance of applications running on them. Using such application-based QoS evaluation approach, the heterogeneous nature of the underlying networks and the diversity of their traffic can be adequately taken into account. In this paper, we propose an application-based QoS evaluation approach for heterogeneous networks. Through simulation studies, we show that this assessment approach facilitates better QoS management and monitoring of heterogeneous network configurations.