Improving performance of 3G mobile data offloading through WiFi networks by data caching

Abstract

In the recent years there has been a skyrocket rise in mobile data usage especially due to the large number of smartphones in use. This has led to a rigorous traffic overloading in cellular networks and the trend is expected to continue. It is imperative that architectures are put in place to handle this data. Use of Wifi to offload data has been considered as one of the immediate solutions.

In this paper I propose Wifi caching to offload mobile data. Tests were carried out using OMNet++ a discreet event simulator. From the experiments done it can be seen that the throughput is best when the number of hosts are about 3 and 10. Further increase of hosts above 10 hosts then the throughput and efficiency begin to go down. However when LRU caching is implemented the general throughput is slightly lower than when caching is not implemented which is a concern, and was not the expected result. The user request latency is slightly higher after caching.

The AP caching model can be tested using other different caching algorithms to see which one would give best results.