A Review of Policy-Based Resource and Admission Control Functions in Evolving Access and Next Generation Networks

The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) adopted in the core of Next Generation Networks (NGNs) promises to make network management easier by separating the control and the transport planes. Therefore, an interface between applications and the underlying transport network has been defined that offers a dynamic and efficient management of network resources based on a policy-based resource control engine. The resulting resource management framework enables the delivery of both the existing carrier grade existing and the next generation Quality of Service (QoS) sensitive services across operator-controlled networks using heterogeneous transport technologies. This review sheds some light into the policy control layer concept and the extended nomenclature introduced by current standardization works. The approaches of international standards development organizations, such as the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), the WiMAX Forum, and CableLabs are reviewed and compared with each other revealing the common architectural trend. Challenges and works in progress of NGN resource management towards Fixed and Mobile Convergence (FMC) are discussed as well.