Management System for Terminals in the Wireless B3G World

In the era of wireless communications, Beyond the 3rd Generation (B3G), a network operator (NO) should satisfy numerous requirements, namely, personalisation, context awareness, always best connectivity, ubiquitous service provision and seamless mobility. A NO can efficiently satisfy the requirements by relying on the different radio networks of its heterogeneous infrastructure, and potentially on other cooperating networks. In this respect, the NO should possess advanced management mechanisms for driving its users to the most appropriate networks that satisfy the requirements. The presentation of such a management system is the specific contribution of this paper. The system is called Reconfigurable Terminal Management System (RTMS). In general, it provides the means for profile modelling, the acquisition of monitoring/discovery/ context information, and the negotiation and selection of configurations, based on information deriving from policies, as well as the profiles and the context. Our work focuses on the role and the information of the components of the RTMS. Concrete functionality for accomplishing the role is also presented. Nevertheless, the system is open to the integration of alternate functionality. Our discussion includes a business case that presents in high-level terms the role of the management system, a detailed description of the components of the management system and results that show the efficiency of the management schemes. A summary and further research challenges, conclude this article. © 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.