Architecture for Next-Generation Reconfigurable Wireless Networks using Cognitive Radio

The next generation of wireless networks, as envisioned by recent advances in cognitive radio (CR) technologies, will be intelligently adjust their configuration to changes in the communication environment. Reconfigurability is set to be an important facet in the evolving world of mobile and wireless communications, through which technologies such as cognitive radio are greatly facilitated. In next generation of reconfigurable wireless networks, various wireless access networks coexist in the same frequency band using cognitive radio and internetworking using IP multimedia subsystem (IMS). This paper therefore discusses the introduction of a system architecture that incorporates cognitive radio and IMS. The architecture takes the emerging 3GPP system and Wimax system as an example, and focuses on the issue of common signaling, resource management and security.