Distributed Control and Management Framework for Mobile and Multi-access Communication

To support roaming, access control, and different optimizations in the network architecture, a new distributed control and management framework, shown in Figure 1, is required. The basis of this framework is a unified signalling architecture that is capable of serving different entities, located either in the network or in the terminals controlled by different players (terminals by the user, network by the service provider). The network side elements that would benefit from such a signalling framework include, for example, policy management, network/operator aided mobility management, and resource management. On the terminal side, mechanisms such as mobility management or transport protocol optimization solutions need access to extensive amount of information related to network access characteristics and roaming.