Generic Abstraction of Access Performance and Resources for Multi-Radio Access Management

In this paper abstract metrics for the performance and resource situation of an access system are derived Such an abstraction is needed for multi-access systems where different, typically heterogeneous access systems shall be coordinated in an efficient way. There, the abstractions are used to compare and evaluate different access technologies as part of the access selection process and also to compare the link capabilities or link performance with the service requirements. The abstractions are performed by means of a generic link layer (GLL), which thereby hides the technology-specific characteristics from the access selection performed by multi-radio resource management (MRRM). It is also shown how these abstracted metrics can be used in a number of different access selection algorithms.