A Cross-Layer Architecture for Autonomic Communications

Layered architectures are not sufficiently flexible to cope with the dynamics of wireless-dominated next-generation communications. Most existing architectures and approaches depend purely on local information and provide only poor and inaccurate information gathering at the global scale. De-layered or crosslayer architectures may provide a better solution: cross-layering allows interactions between two or more non-adjacent layers in the protocol stack. We propose a new cross-layer architecture which provides a hybrid local and global view, using gossiping to maintain consistency. We evaluate our proposal informally in terms of communication complexity and in terms of its ability to support the “self-*” properties being proposed within the autonomic communications community.