Sixth International Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing and Services
ACM MobiCom MCS, Paris, France, 2015

Augmenting WiFi Offloading with An Open-source Collaborative Platform

Aaron Yi Ding - University of Helsinki
Yanhe Liu - University of Helsinki
Sasu Tarkoma - University of Helsinki
Hannu Flinck - Nokia
Henning Schulzrinne - Columbia University
Jon Crowcroft - University of Cambridge


Abstract:

Offloading mobile traffic to WiFi networks (WiFi Offloading) 
is a cost-effective technique to alleviate the pressure on 
mobile networks for meeting the surge of data capacity demand. 
However, most existing proposals from standards developing 
organizations (SDOs) and research communities are facing a 
deployment dilemma, either due to overlooking device limitations, 
lack user incentives, or missing operator supports. 

In this position paper, we present an open-source platform 
for WiFi offloading to tackle the deployment challenge. Our 
solution leverages the programmable feature of software-defined 
networking (SDN) to enhance extensibility and deployability
in a collaborative manner. Inspired by our field measurements 
covering 4G/LTE and 802.11ac/n, we exploit context awareness 
as a use case to demonstrate the efficacy of our solution. 
We also discuss the potential usage by cloud service providers 
given the opportunities behind the growing popularity of 
mobile virtual network operators (MVNO).