LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX: Towards IMT-Advanced Networks

Radio Resource Management

Radio resource management (RRM) functionalities oversee the allocation and maintenance of network resource to the various devices during network operation. RRM functionalities in IMT-Advanced comprise both traditional and emerging modules, including modules for admission control, scheduling, resource reservation (for various prioritization objectives), spectrum management, ARQ/HARQ, and routing. The various modules comprise different elements of an overall framework, and are expected to operate in a cohesive manner, serving specific overall operational objectives. Designing frameworks for IMT-Advanced networks, however, is not without challenges. By requirements (no s?), IMT-Advanced networks are expected to deal with certain characteristics (,) among which are an immense magnitude of traffic from both users and devices, a range of traffic requirements for various services and applications, a range of mobility speeds, and different types of access technologies and modes. A definite problem of traditional framework designs is that they do not scale.

Complexity, hence, becomes a key issue to overcome when designing such frameworks, and one that is prominent at the different levels of network management. For example, the difficulty of scheduling multi-carrier access techniques, both OFDMA and SC-FDMA, was illustrated in Chapter 17. And while the separation of the time and frequency aspects of resource allocations does lead to significant operational optimization, ...