Mobile Flexible Networks: The challenges ahead

The general framework of mobile flexible networks is to design self-organizing secure networks where terminals and base stations interact and self-adapt in an intelligent manner without the need of a central controller (or with the right amount of regulation...just enough to let the agents in the network exploit fully the degrees of freedom). Of course, the design depends on the mobility pattern and delay tolerance as in highly mobile environments, exchange of control signaling bears a huge cost whereas for fixed (non-mobile) networks, the designer can dedicate a fraction of the rate (which is negligible in terms of overhead) to optimize the system. One of the big challenges is to find how to optimally split the intelligence between cognitive terminals and cognitive networks. In this paper, we discuss the challenges ahead and provide some research directions to develop the theoretical foundations of these networks.