Architecture of heterogeneous wireless access networks: A short survey

It is well known that mobile networks are facing a tsunami of data traffic and user devices. Traditionally, the capacity of radio access network is mainly increased by efficient, spectrum allocation, advance modulation schemes and frequency division techniques. However, new demands for network capacity and connectivity are completely unprecedented and they cannot be solved by these existing techniques only. Mobile Network Operators (MNO) have to add cost efficient resources/technologies to smoothly operationalize their networks. Fortunately, heterogeneous wireless access networks are able to provide speedy, cost efficient, customized and self-reliant solution in such a complicated communication scenario. In this paper, we present a brief survey of various heterogeneous access network architectures, the key challenges and future architectural trends.