Wireless devices have a plethora of technologies at their disposal to connect to the Internet and other services. Management and control of each technology are traditionally isolated, and coordination between technologies is nearly non-existent. This isolation leads to poor resource usage, which in turn reduces performance and service guarantees. To satisfy growing user demands, we need to leverage the different service guarantees offered by each technology. Additionally, we need to improve orchestration between technologies to increase performance and flexibility while offering a more extensive range of service guarantees and maximizing resource utilization across networks and users. In this work, we present the general challenges one encounters when managing heterogeneous wireless networks. We argue that the primary challenge is the heterogeneity itself, the number of different devices and technologies, the different service requirements, and the increasing complexity as a consequence. However, technology abstraction can overcome these challenges. We provide an overview of state of the art commercial and scientific solutions and show their strengths and weaknesses. Based on this, we discuss the current status and what future challenges still await to provide full seamless heterogeneous wireless network management.

Introduction

Today’s devices, such as phones, wireless access points (APs), sensors, and other machines, are often equipped with multiple networking technologies to enable them always to stay connected. This connectivity allows users to use a plethora of Internet and other services through technologies like Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), Long-Term Evolution (LTE), or IEEE 802.11 with even more technologies in the future such as IEEE 802.11ax/ay or 5G solutions [1–۳]. We expect this trend to continue, with a further increase in available technologies. From this follow two scenarios: (i) technologies cover similar scenarios but do not share spectrum, such as LTE and IEEE 802.11 bring Internet access to users, (ii) technologies cover different scenarios but share the spectrum, such as IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth. Currently, technologies are isolated, and applications or the operating system takes care of technology selection. This isolation leads to inefficient use of each technology; for example, one technology is congested while another has plenty of free resources. To truly achieve the high bandwidth and low latency requirements of today’s services, orchestration across technologies needs to be in place. Only a holistic approach allows optimizing the performance of services in these heterogeneous networks.