Realization Aspects of Multi-Radio Management Based on IEEE 802.21

In this article, we present a multi-radio management (MRM) architecture for intelligent access selection and load balancing over multiple radio access technologies. We discuss possible implementations of this MRM architecture and analyze to what extent the IEEE 802.21 ‘Media Independent Handover’ framework can be applied here. Starting from the fundamental building blocks of the multi-radio management architecture, we find several issues with respect to the integration with and the interworking between today’s 3GPP and non-3GPP networks. Because support of 802.21 can largely differ from one access technology to another, we propose ways to compensate for these differences and finally present an adapted MRM architecture.