Reuse and Validation of Requirements for Mobile Systems

In the mobile wireless communication domain, different systems apply common solutions to similar functional and architectural design problems. The recognition of these commonalities is a starting point towards ironing out differences and possibly towards finding better ways to interwork different systems and to develop new ones. There is therefore a need for recognizing and reusing these commonalities. The concept of pattern, which is used in the software community to describe programming solutions to specific recurring problems, can be adopted for this purpose. This paper proposes an approach for reuse and validation of a set of solutions for mobility and radio resource management functions, solutions that have been identified as common among a number of second and third generation systems. The focus is on the early development stages. A visual technique called Use Case Maps (UCMs) is applied to graphically specify reusable requirements. LOTOS methods are used for validation.