Current status and future directions of software architectures for telecommunications

Telecommunication software is notoriously complex and expensive. Developers of telecommunication applications have to satisfy numerous, often conflicting, user requirements and cope with the universe of telecommunication protocols, hardware platforms, and network architectures. The only way to overcome these difficulties, to deliver high quality services, and to keep up with the pace at which new telecommunication technologies are introduced, is to use efficient software architectures. What will software architectures for future telecommunication systems look like? What will be required from them? Do existing architectures fulfil these demands? This paper analyses general and specific requirements for telecommunication software and reviews several recent architectures for telecommunication systems. Subsequently, a view is put forward as to how these architectures should evolve to support the variety of technologies and applications of the future.

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