Ambient Networks: Co-operative Mobile Networking for the Wireless World

Acknowledgements ix

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The Current Communications Environment 1

1.2 The Ambient Networking Concept 4

1.3 The Ambient Networks Project 4

1.4 How to Read This Book 5

1.5 Outlook 6

2 Ambient Networks – The Consequence of Convergence 7

2.1 Convergence Leading Towards Ambient Networks 7

2.2 Realization of Convergence 8

2.3 Converged All-IP Networks 9

2.4 Network Convergence with the IP Multimedia Subsystem 12

2.5 Towards Ambient Networks 18

2.6 Motivation for a New Approach 19

2.7 Architectural Requirements for Ambient Networks 21

2.8 Summary 26

3 The Business Environment for Ambient Networks 27

3.1 Business Drivers and Benefi ts 27

3.2 Business Actors 30

3.3 The AN Business Proposition: The Value Network 33

3.4 Financial Aspects 37

3.5 Network Composition – Business View 38

3.6 Migration Aspects 40

3.7 Summary 42

4 Architecture and Components 43

4.1 Introduction 43

4.2 The Ambient Network Approach 44

4.3 The Ambient Control Space Concept 46

4.4 The Ambient Layer Model 53

4.5 Summary 64

5 Security in Ambient Networks 65

5.1 Introduction 65

5.2 Security Problem Space in Ambient Networks 67

5.3 Security Architecture 70

5.4 Key Problems and Solutions 79

5.5 Conclusion, Outlook and Further Work 92

6 Network Composition 93

6.1 Introduction and Motivation 93

6.2 Composition Procedures 94

6.3 Definition of Composition Types 97

6.4 Conclusions 105

7 GANS – Generic Ambient Networks Signalling 107

7.1 Introduction 107

7.2 State of the Art 110

7.3 Protocol Architecture 114

7.4 GANS Transport Layer Protocol 116

7.5 QoS Signalling Application 118

7.6 Conclusions 124

8 Multi-Radio Access 125

8.1 Introduction 125

8.2 Multi Radio Access – Problems and State of the Art 128

8.3 The AN Multi-Radio Access Architecture 133

8.4 Access Selection 138

8.5 Challenging Multi-Radio Access Networking Scenarios 146

8.6 Deployment Cost Savings 151

8.7 Migration Issues 154

8.8 Conclusion, Outlook and Further Work 154

9 Ambient Networks Mobility Management 157

9.1 Background and Motivation 157

9.2 The Framework for Mobility Management 159

9.3 Functional Entities 166

9.4 Trigger Mechanisms 169

10 Overlay Networks for Media Delivery 177

10.1 Introduction 177

10.2 Why Media Delivery Support in the Network Infrastructure? 178

10.3 Media Delivery Architecture 181

10.4 Concept Evaluation and Demonstration 196

10.5 Conclusion, Outlook and Further Work 201

11 ContextWare – Context Awareness in Ambient Networks 203

11.1 Introduction 203

11.2 Network Context Awareness 204

11.3 Context Awareness in Ambient Networks 206

11.4 Ambient Networks ContextWare: Architecture and System Design 211

11.5 ContextWare Prototypes 223

11.6 Conclusions 230

12 Towards Ambient Networks Management 231

12.1 Introduction 231

12.2 Ambient Networks Management Challenges 234

12.3 Ambient Networks Management Approaches 235

12.4 Conclusions 255

References 261

Abbreviations 269

Index 273