Stochastic Optimal SIM Selection for Multi-SIM Cell-phone Architecture using semi-Markov Decision Processes

Cell-phones equipped with multiple subscriber-identity-modules (SIMs), have already started capturing the cellular market. It is expected that these cell-phones will capture more than 7% of global cell-phone sales by 2014. The key advantage of these phones over their conventional counterpart is the simultaneous access to different cellular networks. The selection process among available cellular service providers becomes a complicated task when multiple factors have to be accounted for by the user. We propose an optimal SIM selection mechanism for multi-SIM cell-phones by employing semi-Markov decision process framework. Performance evaluation results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed model, which is flexible and can easily be adapted for different cell-phone architectures.