IP-driven access-independent resource management in converged access networks

✍ Scribed by Markus Bauer; Armin Dekorsy; Peter Schefczik; Michael Soellner

• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 694 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1089-7089
• DOI: 10.1002/bltj.20235

✦ Synopsis

A key requirement on future networks is to provide the user with seamless broadband access for triple-play services via any available access technology with high end-to-end quality of service. In this paper we propose a novel resource management concept on the network layer that utilizes service-and user-specific cross-layer metrics to control the resources in an all-Internet Protocol (IP) access network optimally via IP mechanisms such as routing and traffic engineering. We interpret any link, wireless or wireline, as an IP-hop in an all-IP network where major lower layer information is included in such metrics. This approach turns out to be access technology-independent, leading to a unified resource management concept in a "converged" wireline/wireless environment. With this proposal, we leverage flat IP-based cellular architectures like the Alcatel-Lucent Base Station Router (BSR) technologies and show how wireless and wireline access nodes can be integrated into future converged all-IP networks. The paper is based on results from ScaleNet, a European research initiative that is dedicated to advancing a vision of a scalable and flexible next-generation access network that provides an IP-optimized integration of heterogeneous access systems for future broadband multimedia services.