RECONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT IN 4 G MOBILE NETWORKS : REQUIREMENTS , PROCESS AND ARCHITECTURE

Global vision consensus on the next generation of wireless mobile communications, broadly termed 4G, sketches a heterogeneous infrastructure, comprising different wireless access systems in a complementary manner and vested with reconfiguration capabilities that will facilitate a more flexible and dynamic adaptation of the wireless network infrastructure to better meet the ever-changing service requirements. In the present paper, we analyze and identify the functional requirements of reconfiguration, presenting a generic staged reconfiguration procedure and identifying the management requirements in the context of these stages. Next, we introduce a generic, reconfiguration management framework to be hosted on 4G mobile systems and elaborate on its main components.