Download Chapter 8

Access Selection and Cooperation in
Ambient Networks
(from Cooperative Networking)
Ramón Agüero
(Ed. Wiley)
Cooperation & Heterogeneity
• Growing presence of heterogeneous
networks
– Radio technology
– Operators
– Mobility solutions
– Etc
• Need solutions to deal with it (without
direct user involvement)
Ambient Networks
• High level architecture
Ambient Networks
• Ambient Control Space (ACS): set of
dynamic & flexible Functional Entities
• Abstraction Layer
• Interfaces
– Ambient Network Interface (ANI): between
ANs
– Ambient Resource Interface (ARI): with
subjacent technologies
– Ambient Service Interface (ASI): with services
Multi-Radio Access
• MRA Architecture
Multi-Radio Access
• Part of ACS dealing with access selection
• Two main entities
– Generic Link Layer (GLL)
– Multi-Radio Resource Management (MRRM)
Generic Link Layer
• It abstracts information about the available
resources
• Enables fair comparison between various
technologies
– Maps link quality over a generic metric
– Load and available capacity are also
harmonized
• Based on GLL_Control and
GLL_Abstraction Layer
Generic Link Layer
• Abstraction at the GLL
Multi-Radio Resource Management
• Main control entity of MRA
• Selects the most appropriate access
alternative
• It uses the GLL services
– Monitors the available networks
– Collects information about their current status
• MRRM executes access selection
algorithms
Other Functional Entities
• Triggering
– Collects events which might lead to a new
access selection
– Send them to the interested parties
• Handover and Locator Management
– It is charge of executing mobility at an IP level
• Path Selection
– It gathers information from the network (e2e
perspective)
MRA Functions
• Based on a number of elements
MRA Functions
• Detected Set (DS)
– Access elements detected by a terminal
• Validated Set (VS)
– Against general policies (e.g. operator)
• Candidate Set (CS)
– Elements which can cope with requirements
• Active Set (AS)
– Elements assigned to the current flow
MRA Functions
• Announcement and discovery
– Mechanisms to announce the presence of
networks
– Beacon packets with “complementary”
information elements
– Proactive information given by the network
with near-by alternatives
– Role of triggering (to inform about a new
access)
MRA Functions
• Connection establishment
– The MRRM gets a request from a service via
the ASI
– The MRRM (together with Path Selection)
establishes the CS and then the AS
– Finally the HOLM is instantiated to cope with
locator assignment
– GLL is configured to monitor current AS
Handover
• Connection establishment procedure after
various events
– Decrease of link quality
– Load increase
– Change on service requirements
– User preferences
– Etc
Related Work
• Various architectures similar to
MRRM/GLL
– CRRM, JRRM, CARM
• Focused on particular technologies: mostly
3G and WLAN
• Cooperation/competition between
operators
Outlook
• The MRA is flexible enough to integrate
new functionalities
• Two of the most promising ones are…
– Cognitive capacity
– Mesh extensions
Outlook: cognition
• Increase need of distributed approaches to
distribute available resources (i.e.
cooperation)
• Cognition should spam across the whole
protocol stack
• Need to go beyond the traditional cognitive
radio realm
• The MRA provides an appropriate
framework to foster this
Outlook: mesh extensions
• Recent interest on mesh (multi-hop) extensions
– Coverage extension
– Performance enhancements
• Non-conventional networks: e.g. community,
user-provided
• Use of Network Coding to boost performance
(e.g. multicast)
• Challenge to include this information on the
abstraction mechanisms of the GLL
Conclusions
• Multi-Radio Architecture of Ambient
Networks
– Generic Link Layer (GLL): abstraction of
subjacent networks
– Multi-Radio Resource Management (MRRM):
intelligence, access selection algorithms
• Flexibility to include…
– Cognitive capacities
– Mesh extensions