IEEE Releases Heterogeneous Wireless Networks Standard IEEE 1900.4

February 13, 2009 // Published as a news service by IHS

The standard defines the building blocks that comprise network resource managers, device resource managers, as well as the information to be exchanged between the building blocks for enabling coordinated network-device distributed decision-making, which will aid in the optimization of radio resource usage in heterogeneous wireless access networks.

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"In tomorrow's wireless networks context, numerous heterogeneous radio access technologies will have to coexist," said Paul Houzé, chair of the IEEE 1900.4 Working Group and senior standardization manager at France Telecom-Orange Labs.

"These include, of course, the cellular 2G [second generation], 3G [third generation], beyond-3G technologies, as well as wireless local area networks [WLAN] technologies," he said.

"Since mobile devices are also becoming multimode, the need for a coordinated resource management encompassing all these technologies arises: an efficient traffic balancing is required for an optimal usage of the network equipment and an improved user experience," said Houzé.

"This standard fills the need of addressing the overall system architecture and information exchange between the network and devices. Devices using IEEE 1900.4 will be able to optimally choose among the available radio resources and simultaneously use several of these resources and improve the overall efficiency and capacity of the resulting composite network," he said.

IEEE 1900.4 was sponsored by the IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 41 (Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks), formerly known as the IEEE 1900 Standards Committee, which develops standards related to dynamic spectrum access networks.

Source: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE-SA).