Mobile data offloading: how much can WiFi deliver?

This is a quantitative study on the performance of 3G mobile data offloading through WiFi networks. We recruited about 100 iPhone users from a metropolitan area and collected statistics on their WiFi connectivity during about a two and half week period in February 2010. We find that a user is in WiFi coverage for 70% of the time on average and the distributions of WiFi connection and disconnection times have a strong heavy-tail tendency with means around 2 hours and 40 minutes, respectively. Using the acquired traces, we run trace-driven simulation to measure offloading efficiency under diverse conditions e.g. traffic types, deadlines and WiFi deployment scenarios. The results indicate that if users can tolerate a two hour delay in data transfer (e.g, video and image uploads), the network can offload 70% of the total 3G data traffic on average. We also develop a theoretical framework that permits an analytical study of the average performance of offloading. This tool is useful for net...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Kyunghan Lee, Injong Rhee, Joohyun Lee, Yung Yi, Song Chong
• Keywords: Communications, SIGCOMM 2010, WiFi, WiFi Deployment, WiFi Deployment Scenarios