IEEE P1900.B: coexistence support for reconfigurable, heterogeneous air interfaces

This contribution presents and discusses the system concept approach which has been proposed by the European Integrated Project IST-E²R U 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 Terminal Reconfiguration 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.