Proximity-Based Service beyond 4G Network: Peer-Aware Discovery and Communication Using E-UTRAN and WLAN

The arising proximity-based applications and services represent a recent and enormous socio-technological trend that has been generating innovative business models for the mobile networks. This paper proposes a WLAN-based beyond 4G (B4G) network architecture for proximity-based service (ProSe) where WLAN serves as the direct communication radio access technology between user equipment. The peer-aware discovery and communication are supported by an integrated long-term evolution (LTE) evolved packet system (EPS) and WLAN. Regarding the realization of ProSe in B4G network, the main advantages of the proposed solutions are twofold: 1) faster time-to-market and 2) utilizing unlicensed spectrums for proximity-based services in B4G network.