WIRELESS WORLD RESEARCH FORUM
INTRODUCTIONBeyond-third-generation (B3G) systems have been envisaged as an evolution and convergence of mobile communications systems and IP technologies to offer a multitude of services over a variety of access technologies. To fulfill the vision, it is necessary to understand the requirements with respect to the support of heterogeneity in network accesses, communication services, mobility, user devices, and so on. It is equally important to promote the necessary research in networking technology by providing a guiding framework of research areas and technical issues with priority. The new architectures and technologies will have to address the fundamental assumptions and requirements that govern the design. All these are being tackled by the Cooperative Network working group (CoNet) of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), which is working on a series of white papers outlining B3G visions and roadmap, architectural principles, research challenges, and candidate approaches. In the remainder of this article CoNet's main objectives are outlined, while we examine the most important elements of CoNet's architectural principles. Additionally, we address the flamboyant research challenges in cooperative networks and try to give a glimpse of what we think would govern their design and encompass their futuristic form by introducing the main network components and technologies. This is mainly accomplished by focusing on three "hot concepts": mobility management, multiple access, and moving networks.
ABSTRACTBeyond-3G (B3G) systems have been envisaged as an evolution and conv∂ ergence of mobile/wireless communication systems and IP technologies to offer a multitude of services over a variety of access technologies. To fulfill the vision, it is necessary to understand the requirements with respect to the support of heterogeneity in network accesses, communication services, mobility, user devices, and so on. Besides, it is equally important to promote the necessary research in networking technology by providing a guiding framework of research areas and technical issues with priority. The new architectures and technologies will have to address the fundamental assumptions and requirements that govern the design. All these issues are being tackled by the Cooperative Network working group (CoNet) of WWRF; the group is working on a series of white papers outlining B3G visions and roadmap, architectural principles, research challenges, and candidate approaches. This article outlines the CoNet concept, architectural principles, and guidelines for research into cooperative networks assuming that the B3G systems will be built over generic IP networking technologies. The article also presents the key research challenges, research framework, and major network components and technologies. The key points are that the system should be layered on demand, encourage reuse of independent modularized functional blocks, support multiple services and service creation, ensure consistent end-to-end connectivi...