Belief functions in telecommunications and network technologies: an overview

In the last few years, evidence theory, also known as Dempster-Shafer theory or belief functions theory, have received growing attention in many fields such as artificial intelligence, computer vision, telecommunications and networks, robotics, and finance. This is due to the fact that imperfect information permeates the real-world applications, and as a result, it must be incorporated into any information system that aims to provide a complete and accurate model of the real world. Although, it is in an early stage of development relative to classical probability theory, evidence theory has proved to be particularly useful to represent and reason with imperfect information in a wide range of real-world applications. In such cases, evidence theory provides a flexible framework for handling and mining uncertainty and imprecision as well as combining evidence obtained from multiple sources and modeling the conflict between them. The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, it introduces the basics of the belief functions theory with emphasis on the transferable belief model. Second, it provides a practical case study to show how the belief functions theory was used in a real network application, thereby providing guidelines for how the evidence theory may be used in telecommunications and networks. Lastly, it surveys and discusses a number of examples of applications of the evidence theory in telecommunications and network technologies

TOPSIS-based dynamic approach for mobile network interface selection

International audienceThe rapid evolution in mobile wireless communication networks has generated Heterogeneous Wireless Networks (HWNs), which cover a diverse range of networks (e.g., 2G, 3G, and LTE-A). In HWNs, a mobile device supports multiple network interfaces that use different access methods for wireless links. In such an environment, the main challenge is Always Best Connected (ABC), which means that the mobile nodes rank the network interfaces and select the best one at anytime and anywhere according to multiple criteria (application-related criteria, network-related criteria, terminal-related criteria, user-related criteria). In this context, Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) techniques present a promising solution for the network interface selection problem. The Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is one widely adopted MADM method. TOPSIS suffers from ranking abnormalities, e.g., if a low-ranking network (alternative) is disconnected or a new network is discovered, then the order of the higher-ranking networks will change abnormally. These abnormalities can potentially decrease the quality of the results. In this paper, we propose new TOPSIS-based approaches for network interface selection that efficiently tackle the ranking abnormality problem in HWNs. The performance of our methods is evaluated through simulations. The results show that the proposed approaches reduce or completely eliminate the rank reversal, either when networks are disconnected or new networks are connected