Discovering Feasible Protocol Stack Combinations in Beyond 3G Systems: Information Model, Search Algorithms and Performance

Beyond 3G wireless systems will be vested with dynamic reconfiguration capabilities capable of adapting their protocol stacks during runtime to optimize spectrum utilization and, thus, better meet the ever-changing service demands. For protocol stack reconfiguration to become a practical capability, a language for modeling, expressing and circulating data essential to reconfigurable protocol stacks is necessary. We present a generic object-oriented information model for describing the feasible combinctions of protocol layers into protocol stacks. The model supports the derivation of an associated ontology specified in standard W3C semantic languages (OWL). We introduce a novel algorithm for discovering all the feasible protocol layer combinations that render valid protocol stacks, thus facilitating the selection of suitable ones. We assess the performance of a prototypical implementation of our algorithm used to discover feasible protocol stack combinations for the GPRS, UMTS and IMS access standards. Finally, we present our conclusions and provide directions for future work.