innovating communications - CTTC

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FIT-330215-2007-8 LOOP
Started: July 2007
Duration: 24 Months
Volume: 48 person-month
Budget: 201,693 euros
Funding: 54 % from The Spanish Ministry, Tourism and Trade (MITYC)
Project manager: Jonathan Rodriguez (Instituto de
Telecomunicaciones, Portugal)
Partners:
Instituto de Telecomunicaciones, Portugal
Portugal Telecom, Portugal
Semantex, Greece
Christos Verikoukis, PhD_Senior Research Associate_Access Tecnologies
Marc Realp, PhD_Research Associate_Access Tecnologies
Jesús Alonso_PhD candidate_Access Tecnologies
National Centre for Scientific Research, Greece
University of Aegean, Greece
JayNet, Portugal
Nonious Software, Portugal
Iquadrat, Spain
TRIMEK, Spain
CBT, Communication &Multimedia S. L., Spain
Turkcell, Turkey
Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Spain
Telefónica I+D, Spain
Sigint Solutions, LTD, Cyprus
Democritos, Greece
Coexistence and Optimization for LTE-RAN and WAN
The Beyond 3G (B3G) vision is tending towards a diverse wireless networking world where scenarios define that the user will be
able to attain any service, at any time, on any network that is optimized for the application at hand. The objective is to create a
future global infrastructure where several systems can coexist to support transparent end-to-end communications, in an efficient,
cost-effective manner, which is also commonly referred to as ABC (Always Best Connected) philosophy. The 3GPP vision initiated
proceedings on this next generation network in 2004 by setting up a study group on UTRA-UTRAN (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access
Network) Long Term Evolution (LTE). The proposed 3GPP System Architecture Evolution (SAE) will encompass an IP core network
infrastructure with IP interfaces targeting multiple RATs (Radio Access Technologies), which will not only be restricted to 3GPP legacy
systems such as UTRAN or GERAN (GPRS/EDGE Radio Access Network), but will also have inherent open interfaces to accommodate
Wireless Area Networks (WAN), e.g. WiMAX and WLAN, and even wired technologies. This motivated the formation of the LOOP
project and this collective consortium towards a common pre-competitive R&D interest to address interoperability/coexistence
solutions, specifically between 3GPP LTE RAN and WAN (WiMAX and WLAN) to ensure their competitive position in the market and
to have coexistence solutions in place for eventual commercial launch. In the scope of the LOOP project, we aim to address:
- Network discovery, session management and roaming to support improved service delivery of new
applications with the appropriate QoS and charging.
- Ad-Hoc Relay networks for cell coverage enhancement.
- Application of cognitive radio concepts to support opportunistic use of licensed LTE/WiMAX spectrum
by secondary systems.
- Intra-system optimisation to ensure efficient bandwidth utilization.
LOOP innovations will be demonstrated on a coexistence demonstration tool and on real WMAN networks,
which will serve as a basis for evaluating the product market potential, targeting a commercial launch.
Web page: http://www.celtic-initiative.org/Projects/loop/default.asp