Towards the Functional Enhancement of 3GPP Networks with Reconfiguration Capacities

Autor: Nancy Alonistioti, Zachos Boufidis, Vangelis Gazis, Lazaros Merakos
Rok vydání: 2010
Předmět:
Zdroj: Wireless Personal Communications. 58:713-739
ISSN: 1572-834X
0929-6212
DOI: 10.1007/s11277-009-9903-0
Popis: Over the last decade, several wireless access systems, such as broadband WLAN and WMAN (e.g., IEEE 802.11 and 802.16), broadcast systems (e.g., DAB, DVB-T) and short-range connectivity systems (e.g., Bluetooth, UWB), have emerged to complement existing second (2G) and third (3G) generation cellular systems. The common objective is to migrate to a flexible connectivity platform that will support the disparate requirements of mobile applications in the next-generation era, commonly referred to as 4G. To achieve a versatile multi-radio and multi-protocol access from mobile devices of limited resources in 4G, the original software-radio concept has evolved into across-the-board reconfiguration, which includes not only radio-specific functionalities but supports also the dynamic modification of the entire protocol stack. The present article clarifies the fundamental aspects of reconfiguration and points out the shortcomings of current standards for describing the reconfiguration capabilities (i.e., metadata about the feasible alternative configurations) of mobile network elements. An object-oriented model for reconfiguration metadata is introduced and isomorphically mapped to an RDF vocabulary, which is used to describe reconfigurable protocol stacks as defined for UMTS/WLAN mobile devices. The associated description languages and formats are presented and evaluated with regard to their applicability and suitability for this task and the criteria for choosing one are identified and detailed. Next, the article proposes a novel generic modular architecture for reconfiguration support in 4G mobile networks and elaborates on its functional components. We investigate the integration of our logical architecture in the 3GPP mobile network architecture and illustrate the allocation of its functional elements over the logical domains of 3GPP system Release 6 and onwards. Furthermore, we show the signaling between terminal-side and network-side architecture components for software download and protocol stack reconfiguration. Finally, we summarize our experience gained from a prototype implementation, evaluate the total signaling cost, and give directions for future work.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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