LYT GST EDIT-JAN 1/4/07 1:23 PM Page 4
GUEST EDITORIAL
Evolution toward 4G
Wireless Networking
Hsiao-Hwa Chen
F ourth-generation (4G) or beyond 3G wireless net-
works promise much higher overall data through-
put and much more diverse services than current
networks do. All-IP wireless has emerged as the most pre-
ferred platform for 4G wireless networks. In such networks
different access systems are integrated on an all-IP-based
network, including interworking of different systems with
the backbone. The design of a future wireless networking
architecture has to take into account the fact that the dom-
inant load in 4G wireless networks will be high-speed, con-
tent-rich, burst-type traffic, which already poses a great
challenge to all existing wireless networking technologies
deployed in current networks. Many research activities
have been carried out to design suitable architectures for
4G wireless networks, which should be efficient, adaptive,
flexible, and scalable, and should also be able to work har-
monically with different network technologies (including
currently deployed networks) and accommodate heteroge-
neous networking applications. Additional research activi-
ties are required to investigate how to realize smooth
migration and seamless interoperability between the legacy
networks and future 4G wireless networks. The architec-
ture of 4G wireless networks should effectively address the
constraints and problems existing in the currently deployed
wireless networking platforms, such as rigid network struc-
ture, low overall bandwidth efficiency, strictly interference-
limited capacity, difficulty to perform rate-matching
algorithms, lack of flexibility to implement cross-layer net-
work design, etc. The research on the next generation wire-
less networking involves many cutting-edge research topics,
such as cross-layer joint optimization design, quality of ser-
vice assurance, dynamic network recourse allocation, ad
hoc or mesh network routing algorithms, heterogeneous
networking, cooperative network detection, vertical/hori-
zontal network services integration, eand so on. This spe-
cial issue will serve as a stimulus to promote and accelerate
technological evolution toward 4G wireless networking.
The response to the call for papers for this issue is
indicative of the great interest with which the community
views this topic. Of the many high quality in depth and
breadth papers received from both academia and industry
around the world, we could only accommodate a selected
4 IEEE Network • January/February 2007
Mohsen Guizani Werner Mohr
few in this issue. In the first article, “On Design Issues of
Next Generation Mobile Networks,” M. Rubaiyat Kibria
and Abbas Jamalipour point out that the success of NGMN
design will depend on its ability to address key design
issues, mainly architectural adaptation and modification of
service continuity functions (i.e., mobility and resource
management) that arise from such interoperability. The
solutions presented in this article attempt to resolve these
issues by considering an IP-based interworking framework
that promotes evolution of individual networks and integra-
tion of new technologies.
In the second article, “Cooperative and Opportunistic
Transmission for IEEE 802.11-Based Ad Hoc Networks,”
Qian Zhang et al. discuss the issues on cooperative and
opportunistic transmission for wireless ad hoc networks. In
this article two types of opportunistic transmission, which
leverage time diversity and multi-user diversity, are studied.
For opportunistic transmission that exploits time diversity,
it is observed that the inequality in channel contention due
to the hidden terminal phenomenon tends to result in ener-
gy inefficiency. Under this design philosophy, the authors
propose a distributed cooperative rate adaptation scheme
to reduce the overall system power consumption.
In the third article, “NTP-ITRI SIOTP: A Test Tool for
Advanced Mobile Services,” Yi-Bing Lin et al. describe a
system design for an Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) service
interoperability test (IOT) platform called NTP-SIOT.
Based on the TTCN-3 specifications, the authors show how
4G mobile applications such as OMA multimedia messag-
ing services can be tested in this platform.
In the fourth article, “Load Balancing for
Cellular/WLAN Integrated Networks,” Wei Song et al. pre-
sent a policy framework for resource management in a
loosely coupled cellular/WLAN integrated network, where
load balancing policies are designed to efficiently utilize
the pooled resources of the network.
In the fifth article, “Automated Network Selection in a
Heterogeneous Wireless Network Environment,” Farooq
Bari and Victor Leung discuss an important issue in 4G
wireless networking: automated network selection in a het-
erogeneous wireless network environment. They describe a
comprehensive decision making process to rank candidate
LYT GST EDIT-JAN 1/4/07 1:23 PM Page 5
GUEST EDITORIAL
networks for service delivery to the terminal. The proposed
mechanism is based on a unique decision process that uses
compensatory and non-compensatory multi-attribute deci-
sion making algorithms jointly to assist terminals in select-
ing the best candidate network.
In the sixth article, “Packet Scheduling in 3.5G High
Speed Downlink Packet Access Networks: Breadth and
Depth,” Bader Al-Manthari et al. address the issues on
packet scheduling in high speed downlink packet access
networks. The authors discuss state-of-the-art HSDPA
scheduling algorithms in terms of their objectives, advan-
tages, and limitations, and they suggest further research
issues that need to be addressed. In addition, they propose
a packet scheduling algorithm for data traffic in HSDPA,
whose effectiveness has been demonstrated by simulations.
In the seventh article, “Dynamic Network Composition
for Beyond 3G Networks: A 3GPP Viewpoint,” C. Kappler
et al. discuss dynamic network composition for beyond 3G
networks from a Third Generation Partnership Project
(3GPP) as well as an industrial point of view. The authors
give an overview of current beyond 3G trends in 3GPP and,
in particular, they introduce a new 3GPP study item on
network composition. Network composition addresses
dynamic and generic establishment of control-plane inter-
working between the heterogeneous network types of
today, such as 3GPP core networks, non-3GPP operator
networks, heterogeneous access networks, and personal
area networks.
In the article, “Dynamic Resource Allocation: Perform-
ing Cross-Layer Optimization in Dynamic OFDM Sys-
tems,” Mathias Bohge et al. address the issues in dynamic
resource allocation in OFDM systems based on cross-layer
optimization principles and techniques. The authors discuss
several basic optimization models and present selected
heuristic approaches to realize cross-layer policies through
dynamic resource allocation. The conclusions obtained
from the article will be useful to all people working on
OFDM resource allocation schemes, which will become
increasingly important due to the popularity of OFDM-
based technology.
We would like to thank the authors of all submitted
papers that have made the success of this special issue pos-
sible. We hope that our readers will enjoy reading the arti-
cles included in this special issue. In particular, we would
like to thank numerous anonymous reviewers for their
hard work. We would like also to thank the previous Edi-
tor-in-Chief, Dr. Chatschik Bisdikian, for his strong sup-
port and encouragement throughout the entire editorial
process of this special issue. Finally, we want to express
our thanks to the Liaison Editor for this special issue and
present Editor-in-Chief, Dr. Ioanis Nikolaidis, for his kind
help regarding the review and decision making process of
this special issue.
Biographies
HSIAO-HWA CHEN (hshwchen@ieee.org)is currently a full professor at National
Sun Yat-Sen University, Taiwan. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Zhe-
jiang University, China, and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Oulu, Fin-
IEEE Network • January/February 2007
land, in 1982, 1985 and 1990, respectively, all in electrical engineering. He worked
with the Academy of Finland for his research on spread spectrum communica-
tions as a research associate and the National University of Singapore as a
senior lecturer from 1991 to 1997. He joined the Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan, as an associate professor
in 1997 and later became a full professor of the university. In 2001 he joined Nation-
al Sun Yat-Sen University of Taiwan as founding director of the Institute of
Communications Engineering of the university. He has been a visiting professor
at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany,
in 1999, the Institute of Applied Physics, Tsukuba University, Japan, in 2000,
the Institute of Experimental Mathematics, Essen University, Germany, in 2002,
and the Department of Information Engineering, Chinese University of Hong
Kong in 2003. His research effort in spread spectrum and CDMA communica-
tion systems has resulted in numerous U.S., Finnish, and Taiwanese patents,
most of which have been licensed to industry for commercial applications. He
has authored and co-authored over 200 technical papers and five books in
these areas. He is the Chief Editor (Asia and the Pacific) for Wireless Commu-
nications and Mobile Computing Journal and International Journal of Commu-
nication Systems. He served as Guest Editor for IEEE Communications
Magazine, IEEE JSAC, IEEE Wireless Communications, and IEEE Network. He
is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Wireless Com-
munications, IEEE Vehicular Technology, and others. He served as a sympo-
sium chair in many major conferences, including ICC (from 2004 to 2007),
GLOBECOM (from 2005 to 2007), and VTC2003-Spring. He is a recipient of
the numerous research and teaching Awards from the National Science Coun-
cil, Ministry of Education, and other professional associations in Taiwan. He is
also serving as a guest professor at Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao-
Tung University, China.
M OHSEN G UIZANI [SM] (mguizani@cs.wmich.edu) is currently a full professor
and chair of the Computer Science Department at Western Michigan University.
He served as chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of
West Florida from 1999 to 2003. He was an associate professor of electrical
and computer engineering and director of graduate studies at the University of
Missouri-Columbia from 1997 to 1999. Prior to joining the University of Mis-
souri, he was a research fellow at the University of Colorado-Boulder. From
1989 to 1996, he held academic positions at the Computer Engineering Department
at the University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He was
also a visiting professor with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Depart-
ment at Syracuse University, New York, 1988–1989. He received his B.S. (with
distinction) and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering, and M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in computer engineering in 1984, 1986, 1987, and 1990, respectively,
from Syracuse University. His research interests include computer networks,
design and analysis of computer systems, wireless communications and comput-
ing, and optical networking. He currently serves on the editorial boards of many
national and international journals, such as Optical Network, Journal of Parallel and
Distributed Systems and Networks, and International Journal of Computer Research.
He has served as a guest editor of IEEE Communications Magazine (April 2000
and April 2002), IEEE JSAC (March 2004), and several other publications. He
is the founder and Editor-In-Chief of Wireless Communications and Mobile
Computing, a journal published by Wiley (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/
jpages/1530-8669/). He is the author of five books: Designing ATM Switching Net-
works (McGraw-Hill, 1999; http://www.pbg.mcgraw-hill.com/computing/
authors/guizani.html), Wireless Systems and Mobile Computing (Nova Science Pub-
lishers, 2001), Optical Networking and Computing for Multimedia Systems
(Marcel Dekker, 2002), Computer Networks and Data Communications with The
Internet (Wiley, 2003), and Wireless Communications Systems and Networks (Kluw-
er, 2003). He has presented a number of tutorials at different conferences.
W ERNER M OHR [SM] (werner-mohr@siemens.com) graduated from the Univer-
sity of Hannover, Germany, with a Master’s degree in electrical engineering
in 1981 and a Ph.D. degree in 1987. From 1987 to 1990 he was a senior
engineer at the Institute of High-Frequency Technology at the University of
Hannover. He has been with Siemens AG, Mobile Network Division in
Munich, Germany since 1991. He has been involved in the European RACE-II
Project ATDMA. From 1995 to 1996 he was active in ETSI SMG5 for stan-
dardization of UMTS. From December 1996 he was project manager of the
ACTS FRAMES Project until the project finished in August 1999. This project devel-
oped the basic concepts of the UMTS radio interface. He is head of the
Research Alliances in the Mobile Networks infrastructure division of Siemens
Networks GmbH & Co. KG. He was involved in the 5th Framework Program
of the EU. Currently, he is the coordinator of the WINNER Project in Frame-
work Program 6 of the European Commission and chairman of the Wireless World
Initiative. In addition, he is involved in the eMobility Platform. He was chair of
the Wireless World Research Forum from its launch in August 2001 to Decem-
ber 2003. He is a member of VDE. In 1990 he received the Award of the ITG
in VDE. He is a board member of Informationstechnische Gesellschaft, VDE,
Germany, for the term 2006 to 2008. He is co-author of the book Third Gen-
eration Mobile Communications.
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