Reconfigurable Multi-Mode Protocol Reference Model Facilitating Modes Convergence

The vision for the next generation of wireless communications is a ubiquitous radio system concept, providing wireless access from short-range to wide-area, with one single adaptive system for all envisaged radio environments. To achieve this, a future radio system is envisaged to efficiently adapt to multiple scenarios by using different modes of a common technology basis. By introducing a reference model for multi-mode protocols, we target a harmonization of the various current research efforts in approaching multi-mode capability and protocol adaptability. Based on the idea of identification of commonalities between multiple envisaged modes and a separation of the common and the mode-specific parts of the protocol, this paper defines a reference model for a multi-mode protocol incorporating the ideas of functional partitioning and re-configuration of layers to achieve both horizontal and vertical convergence between multiple modes.