Policy based networking in the integration effort of 4G networks and services

We present system integration requirements and provide a new framework to support the integration of 4G networks and services. This framework uses a policy based networking concept in order to provide the unified control in the oncoming 4G networks and services. We also provide an analysis of the candidate signaling protocols in this framework. Two approaches are described: i) the unified QoS, mobility, and security signaling and ii) the heterogeneous QoS, mobility, and security signaling. In addition, we introduce user, terminal, network and service profiles and management in order to provide a user centric approach and consider different user, terminal, network, and service constraints in order to better adapt the user service as well as the network configuration to these constraints. Finally, we give a short estimation on the composition of exchanged signaling data with respect to the aspired level of integration.