Software Defined Radio: Architectures, Systems and Functions

10

Radio Resource Management in Heterogeneous Networks

Jijun Luo and Markus Dillinger

Siemens AG

Lucas Elicegui and David Grandblaise

Motorola Labs, European Communications Research Lab, Paris, France

10.1 Introduction

10.1.1 Definition of Radio Resource Management

Software defined radio (SDR) technologies enable the future network to meet challenges of high quality of service requirement by supporting high mobility and throughput for multimedia services with heterogeneous user requirements. Mobile users expect services that will not only depend on a traditional single traffic type, but multiple traffic types even supported by adaptive simultaneous connections from different network types, e.g. cellular, ad hoc. However, the freedom of co-existing heterogeneous networks raises further questions about how to manage the traffic in networks in an efficient way. From a system management point of view, a simple physical layer processing restricted system cannot meet the co-existing multiple radio access technologies (RATs). A reconfigurable environment, flexible and scalable network and traffic management is of high interests and expectations to emerge. It should support the complete network with convergence towards an Internet Protocol (IP)-based network and ubiquitous, seamless access among second generation (2G), third generation (3G), broadband and broadcast wireless access schemes, augmented by ad hoc networks schemes and short-range connectivity between intelligent communication ...