A Survey on Mobile Data Offloading Technologies

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 6; pp. 5101 - 5111
• Main Authors: Zhou, Huan, Wang, Hui, Li, Xiuhua, Leung, Victor C. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Base stations; Electronic devices; heterogeneous networks; Microcell networks; Mobile computing; Mobile data offloading; Mobile handsets; Multimedia; opportunistic mobile networks; Service introduction; small cell networks; Smartphones; Tablet computers; Taxonomy; Traffic management; WiFi networks; Wireless fidelity; Wireless networks
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2018.2799546

Recently, due to the increasing popularity of enjoying various multimedia services on mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, ipads, and electronic tablets), the generated mobile data traffic has been explosively growing and has become a serve burden on mobile network operators. To address such a serious challenge in mobile networks, an effective approach is to manage data traffic by using complementary technologies (e.g., small cell network, WiFi network, and so on) to achieve mobile data offloading. In this paper, we discuss the recent advances in the techniques of mobile data offloading. Particularly, based on the initiator diversity of data offloading, we classify the existing mobile data offloading technologies into four categories, i.e., data offloading through small cell networks, data offloading through WiFi networks, data offloading through opportunistic mobile networks, and data offloading through heterogeneous networks. Besides, we show a detailed taxonomy of the related mobile data offloading technologies by discussing the pros and cons for various offloading technologies for different problems in mobile networks. Finally, we outline some opening research issues and challenges, which can provide guidelines for future research work.