TINA architecture extensions to support terminal mobility

The need for convergence of mobile and fixed networks at service control and management level is a key issue in the telecommunications environment. The existence of a generic service layer spanning over a set of heterogeneous networks promises several advantages for greater flexibility and efficiency in service development and deployment. TINA-C has established an architecture that has the potential and momentum to respond to such challenges. However, several adjustments and refinements to both the TINA network and services architectures appear necessary when addressing mobility. Mobile communications force the architect to re-think how to include both personal and terminal mobility in the architecture. In this paper we describe a way to apply the TINA network resource architecture (NRA) to terminal mobility and particularly to handover support. In addition, to exploit various wireless technologies in the delivery of multimedia services, we have developed a way of adapting mobile wireless networks so that some aspects of quality-of-service and traffic classes can be supported to an extent that would not be directly allowable by the underlying infrastructure. Our solution is based on the entity called the mobile network adapter (MNA) that tries to overcome the limitations due to lower layer protocol architectures, thanks to a smart, generic, mobility-aware management of resources. We also report design and real experience gained while implementing the TINA architecture on top of a telecommunications infrastructure, involving GSM, ATM and wireless LAN (WLAN) transport networks. Our studies and experiments revealed the need for introducing specific extensions/refinements to the NRA. These extensions/refinements represent the key contribution of this paper.