ABSTRACT

Th e migration of the radio access network to an all-Internet Protocol (IP) network, as proposed in the IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) standard, provides signifi cant advantages in terms of cost savings, scalability, and simplifi ed network management for providing a variety of IP-based services in wireless networks. Th is paper proposes a novel, distributed radio network architecture to support all-IP services using orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-shared access. Specifi cally, the architecture distributes the so-called fast cell-site selection (FCSS) functionality among base-station routers (BSRs) so that data transmission for a call can be switched quickly from one BS with a weak radio link to another with a better link,

as a means to enhance system capacity. A key objective of the new architecture with distributed radio resource management functions is to provide a unifi ed approach to supporting multimedia IP applications. We present a distributed architecture for radio network control that specifi cally supports signaling message exchanges among network elements for FCSS in the presence of terminal mobility. We study the design and quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of the backhaul network for supporting FCSS.