TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– Several new network types have emerged over the last couple of years. Many of these networks are being connected together to provide mobile users with the capability of staying always connected to the Internet which requires seamless transitions from one network to another without causing interruption to on‐going connections. To maintain connectivity during handoff, all the networks that are accessible to the mobile station need to be known. The paper aims to propose a novel energy‐efficient network discovery approach that enables fast discovery and selection of available access networks.Design/methodology/approach– The performance of the proposed approach over an actual network testbed consisting of heterogeneous networks (such as wireless local area, cellular) is evaluated.Findings– It was found that the approach yields between 12.4 and 19.1 per cent improvement in battery power consumption over other network discovery approaches.Originality/value– The paper proposes and implements a novel scheme to discover wireless networks in a multi‐access environment consisting of heterogeneous networking technologies. VL - 4 IS - 1 SN - 1742-7371 DO - 10.1108/17427370810873101 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/17427370810873101 AU - Siddiqui Farhan AU - Zeadally Sherali ED - Sherali Zeadally ED - Lu Yan PY - 2008 Y1 - 2008/01/01 TI - An efficient wireless network discovery scheme for heterogeneous access environments T2 - International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 50 EP - 60 Y2 - 2024/09/21 ER -