IEEE 802.21: A shift in the Media Independence

In this paper we present our vision on future uses of the Media Independence paradigm developed within the IEEE 802.21. We argue that this specification is an excellent starting point for future applications that require the handling of heterogeneous technologies. The current IEEE 802.21 standard facilitates media independent handovers by providing higher layer mobility management functions with common service primitives for all technologies, thus hiding the technology specifics of the lower layers. In this paper we claim that such a media independent abstraction can be useful for functions other than handovers and advocate for extending the IEEE 802.21 standard to cover these additional functions. We concentrate on a particular scenario currently being discussed in the 802.21 WG, the Spectrum Optimization & White Spaces. We first identify the key challenges that need to be addressed in order to satisfy the requirements of these scenarios by means of a media independence abstraction. Then, based on the requirements identified, we outline a proposal for a media independent service layer architecture.