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Abstract-An important emerging capability is for mobile terminals to be dynamically reconfigured. Through ongoing advances in technology such as software defined radio, reconfiguration of mobile terminals will in the near future be achievable across all layers of the protocol stack. However, along with the capability for such wide-ranging reconfiguration comes the need to manage reconfiguration procedures. This is necessary to coordinate reconfigurations, to ensure that there are no negative effects (e.g. interference to other RATs) as a result of reconfigurations, and to leverage maximal potential benefits of reconfiguration and ensuing technologies such as those involving dynamic spectrum access. The IEEE P1900.4 working group is therefore defining three building blocks for reconfiguration management: Network Reconfiguration Management (NRM), Terminal Reconfiguration Management (TRM), and a radio enabler to provide connectivity between the NRM and TRMs. In this paper we concentrate on aspects of the radio enabler, highlighting its relevance in heterogeneous radio access scenarios, its advantages, and some aspects of its technical realization.

This contribution presents and discusses the system concept approach which has been proposed by the European Integrated Project IST-E 2 R II in the IEEE P1900.B Standardization Study Group (SG); it currently is under further elaboration in the framework of the follow-up IEEE P1900.4 Working Group (WG) whose Project Authorization Request (PAR) was accepted in December 2006. This effort targets reconfigurable (typically Software Defined Radio (SDR) based) networks and terminals in a heterogeneous wireless environment, with multi-homing capable terminals enabling the users to operate multiple wireless links simultaneously. In order to ensure backwards compatibility to legacy standards, the approach is to introduce three new building blocks into the (existing and/or evolving) heterogeneous landscape: i) A Network Reconfiguration Management module, ii) a Radio Enabler and iii) a TerminalReconfiguration Management module. Within this paper, the key functionalities of these building blocks are detailed and discussed; it is furthermore outlined how the introduction of distributed decision-making concepts improves the efficiency of the heterogeneous system in terms of i) signaling overhead, ii) reactivity of user mobile terminals (MTs) and iii) numerical resource selection optimization complexity on the network side.

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