Global roaming management in the next-generation wireless systems

An approach for managing global mobility and roaming in the next-generation wireless systems

Planning the next-generation wireless systems

The commercial proliferation of cellular voice and data service has placed a new challenge for mobile communication systems. Next-generation wireless systems are envisioned to have an all-IP-based infrastructure with the support of heterogeneous access technologies (Akyildiz et al., 2004). Under the circumstance, the Internet Protocol (IP) is selected as the common interconnection protocol to integrate disparate wireless systems, so that mobile users can roam among multiple wireless networks, regardless of the underlying different radio access technologies (Akyildiz et al., 2005; Makaya & Pierre, 2008; Mohanty & Xie, 2007). However, with the advent of new value-added services (video-conference, multimedia streaming, etc.) and novel concepts introduced into Long Term Evolution (LTE) architecture of the 4th Generation (4G) networks, provisioning efficient mobilitymanagement with quality of service guarantees and seamless handoff feature become even more important for next-generation wireless network design. Generally, mobility management allows mobile communication systems to locate roaming terminals for voice/data delivery as well as maintaining network connectivity when the terminal moves into a new service area (Akyildiz et al., 1999). Typically, such process contains two aspects: location management and handoff management (Quintero et al., 2004; Zhang et al., 2010). Location management enables telecommunication systems to find out the network attachment points of roaming nodes for call/data delivery. It usually contains two components: location update and call delivery (or data delivery). The former requires mobile nodes to provide the system with their location information, while the latter indicates that the system is queried for the location information of specific mobile nodes, and then services are delivered to them while they are away from their home network (Zhang et al., 2010). Handoff management aims to maintain network connectivity when mobile nodes change their network attachment points or access points. Obviously, handoff protocols need to preservemobile users’ network connectivity as they move from one network to another, while simultaneously reducing disruption to the ongoing call/data sessions. Therefore, reducing handoff delay and maximizing session continuity are always the primary goals of handoff management (Dimopoulou et al., 2005). Generally, handoff seamlessness means lower packet Performance Analysis of Seamless Handover in Mobile IPv6-based Cellular Networks 13

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology offers significant promise in enhancing wireless communication systems, but its dual-use potential also introduces substantial security risks. This survey explores the security implications of RIS in next-generation wireless networks. We first highlight the dual-use nature of RIS, demonstrating how its communication-enhancing capabilities can be exploited by adversaries to compromise legitimate users. We identify a new class of security vulnerabilities termed “passive-active hybrid attacks,” where RIS, despite passively handling signals, can be reconfigured to actively engage in malicious activities, enabling various RIS-assisted attacks, such as eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle (MITM), replay, reflection jamming, and side-channel attacks. Furthermore, we reveal how adversaries can exploit the openness of wireless channels to introduce adversarial perturbations in artificial intelligence-driven RIS networks, disrupting communication terminals and causing misclassifications or errors in RIS reflection predictions. Despite these risks, RIS technology also plays a critical role in enhancing security and privacy across radio frequency (RF) and visible light communication (VLC) systems. By synthesizing current insights and highlighting emerging threats, we provide actionable insights into cross-layer collaboration, advanced adversarial defenses, and the balance between security and cost. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of RIS technology’s security landscape and underscores the urgent need for robust security frameworks in the development of future wireless systems.

The propagation of electromagnetic (EM) waves plays a fundamental role in the performance of high-speed wireless communication systems. As wireless technologies evolve, the demand for faster data rates and more reliable connections is driving the need for a deeper understanding of EM wave behavior. This article explores the principles of EM wave propagation in high-speed wireless systems, including the factors that affect signal transmission, such as attenuation, diffraction, reflection, and scattering. We examine the challenges posed by different environments, such as urban, rural, and indoor settings, and discuss the technologies used to overcome these challenges in next-generation wireless systems, including 5G and beyond.

The need for wireless communication systems has grown rapidly during the last few years. Moreover, there is a steady growth in the required data rates due to the fact that more and more users request high-bit-rate services. To meet those requirements, current and next-generation wireless systems and networks such as wireless LANs (e.g., IEEE 802.11a) will support much higher data rates compared with established standards. This is basically done by applying advanced transmission schemes and usage of bandwidth resources. Another very promising approach is the introduction of multiple antennas at one or both ends of a link to exploit the spatial dimension of signal transmission for improved link quality and enhanced system capacity. Smart antenna concepts are extensively discussed in this context. The application of concepts with multiple antennas necessitates the introduction of more advanced and computational expensive transmitter and receiver structures, where space-time (ST) processing techniques are required to carry out spatial and temporal information processing jointly. This article introduces a new ST processing concept to enable reduced dimension ST receiver signal processing. The signal dimension can be considerably reduced compared to the number of antennas by exploiting spatial correlation properties of the received antenna signals. The associated signal transformation applies the concept of the Karhunen-Loeve transformation (KLT). A great advantage of the proposed ST processing concept over traditional multiple antenna approaches is the insensitivity of the algorithms to the antenna characteristics and antenna spacing, which allows the use of low-cost antennas. Another significant advantage of the proposed concept is more robust channel estimation due to spatial dimension reduction and the resulting limitation of estimation parameters.

During the past few years, advances in mobile communication theory have\nenabled the development and deployment of different wireless technologies,\ncomplementary to each other. Hence, their integration can realize a unified\nwireless system that has the best features of the individual networks.\nNext-Generation Wireless Systems (NGWS) integrate different wireless systems,\neach of which is optimized for some specific services and coverage area to\nprovide ubiquitous communications to the mobile users. In this paper, we\npropose to enhance the handoff performance of mobile IP in wireless IP networks\nby reducing the false handoff probability in the NGWS handoff management\nprotocol. Based on the information of false handoff probability, we analyze its\neffect on mobile speed and handoff signaling delay.\n

The 2019 Workshop on Next-Generation Wireless with ns-3 (WNGW 2019) was introduced in 2019 to complement the annual Workshop on ns-3 (WNS3). This more specialized workshop focuses its attention on next-generation wireless systems, and on how the research community can develop advanced wireless models for ns-3. Toward this end, WNGW aims to attract contributions from the industry and academia alike. Moreover, it fosters open discussions on the currently available ns-3 models, the ones that are under development, and the ones planned for the future, with the goal of establishing collaborations among different research groups.

Hybrid beamforming with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna arrays plays a pivotal role in achieving high data rates and spectral efficiency in next-generation wireless systems. Nevertheless, the real-time 62design and adaptation of beamforming codebooks and user grouping remain challenging, as conventional machine learning (ML) methods typically rely on the centralized collection of extensive channel state information (CSI), resulting in substantial feedback overhead and potential privacy violations. This chapter proposes a federated multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework for joint hybrid beamforming and dynamic user grouping. Unlike prior work which focuses solely on centralized codebook learning, the proposed approach enables distributed user equipment (UE) to collaboratively train codebook and clustering algorithms without sharing raw data, thereby preserving privacy. The proposed method significantly reduces communication overhead while achieving near-optimal beam patterns and robust scalability in dense network scenarios, making it well-suited for practical deployment in next-generation wireless systems. The experimental findings indicate that for mobile users, federated learning (FL)-based user clustering with MARL outperforms traditional initial access-based beam clustering in MARL.

The integration of heterogeneous wireless networks allows the mobile users to benefit simultaneously from the radio coverage of different access technologies (RAT: Radio Access Technology) and the diversity of applications. Nowadays, applications are becoming more and more critical in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and dynamicity. Handover mechanism is responsible of guaranteeing the required quality of service in ubiquitous environment when mobile users roam across different RATs. The diversification of context metrics offered by these different networks has a direct impact on the user perceived quality of service especially during the network selection process. The present work addresses the network selection process, which is the most important stage of the vertical handover decision mechanism. Our proposed algorithm for Vertical Handover decision making is based on the context awareness and the quality of experience (QoE). It integrates the threshold values of sensitive criteria, which are considered as the required metrics in the making decision process used to select the optimal target network. However, we define a decision function that checks the performance of the given networks and identifies the best solution. Performance offered by the chosen network has to be reviewed since the handover is launched to control the quality of service perceived by the end user. Simulation results improve the perceived network performance by avoiding unnecessary handover. In Ubiquitous environment, most Handover decision mechanisms generate a ping pong effect caused by the inefficiency of the network handover metrics which do not consider the required end user performance. As compared to several existing algorithms, our algorithm fits the expected changes in the network performance and the users preferences without wastage of network resources. It reduces the processing delay and the complexity level caused by unnecessary computation over available radio access technologies which do not ensure required connection performance.

Games played by multiple users, each using a wireless terminal (e.g., PDA), have tremendous revenue potential for next generation wireless systems. However, the next generation of wireless systems (such as UMTS and other 3G systems) alone will not be able to provide the tight delay bounds required by these multi-player games. We develop a system architecture that enables high-quality games among multiple wireless users and at the same time enables network service providers and game service providers to charge for the gaming service. Our architecture relies on wireless vertical communication conducted over UMTS to register (authenticate) the users at the commencement of a game and to report scores at the end of the game. During the game the players exchange information over wireless horizontal communication conducted over wireless LANs. Our architecture is particularly well suited for games that have off-line software distribution, but require a registration (authentication) each time the game is played. In this paper we describe our system architecture, which involves a UMTS-based Wireless Overlay Communication System (WOCS), and give the protocol for game initiation and score submissions. We also outline business cases for our system architecture and discuss the network provider's perspective.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a dominant technology that, combined with advanced techniques and architectures, is set to play an integral role in the next-generation wireless systems. This cutting-edge technology has proved its adaptability and scalability in 5G networks by producing significant results. Recent years have seen a remarkable succession of evolutionary breakthroughs leading to revolutionary trends projected to transform future 6G wireless systems drastically. Terahertz (THz) communication, artificial intelligence (AI), cell-free structures, intelligent omni-surfaces/intelligent reflecting surfaces (IOS/IRS), and other technologies will further improve the performance capabilities of large MIMO. Furthermore, the range of diversified applications based on massive MIMO's foundation include vehicle communications, wireless localization and sensing, inter-planetary communications remote sensing, etc., and these are continuously expanding.

Many emerging wireless applications are based on unique requirements such as edge data processing, distributed trust, and automation, which can be provided and enabled by blockchain technology through decentralization, transaction accountability, and smart contract-based automation. This article discusses opportunities and challenges of such blockchain-enabled wireless applications. First, blockchain technology and 5G system architecture are briefly reviewed. Then, an example wireless application use case is presented to illustrate the benefits that blockchain technology can bring to wireless applications. A set of pending research issues addressing some of the challenges faced by blockchain-enabled wireless applications is introduced. As a potential solution, a wireless blockchain middleware architecture (BlockWare) is proposed, based on a blockchain middleware layer connecting wireless applications and underlying blockchain infrastructure. The blockchain middleware layer interacts with various types of blockchain systems on behalf of different wireless applications. Thus, a wireless application does not need to implement complex blockchain functions, rather relying on the blockchain middleware layer and its services to leverage various underlying blockchain systems. This article also points out several research directions for future study, such as inter-blockchain interactions and interoperability, efficient blockchain transaction management, and blockchain-based messaging in future wireless systems such as 5G, beyond 5G, and 6G.

The broad aim of identity management (IdM) is to manage the resources of an organization (such as files, records, data, and communication infrastructure and services) and to control and manage access to those resources in an efficient and accurate way. Consequently, identity management is both a technical and process-orientated concept. The concept of IdM has begun to be applied in identities-related applications in enterprises, governments, and Web services since 2002. As the integration of heterogeneous wireless networks becomes a key issue in towards the next generation (NG) networks, IdM will be crucial to the success of NG wireless networks. A number of issues, such as mobility management, multi-provider and securities require the corresponding solutions in terms of user authentication, access control, and so forth. IdM in NG wireless networks is about managing the digital identity of a user and ensuring that users have fast, reliable, and secure access to distributed resources and services of an next generation network (NGN) and the associated service providers, across multiple systems and business contexts.

The convergence of heterogeneous wireless networks combines existing wireless networks. An effective combination of different wireless networks should enable them to complement each other and provide high-speed data rate, wide area coverage, and quality of service (QoS) guarantee. In Next Generation Wireless Systems (NGWS), seamless handoff between different wireless access networks plays a vital role. One of the major challenges for seamless mobility is the creation of a vertical handoff protocol. In this paper, the performance of vertical handoff is studied using the integration of third generation (3G) cellular and wireless local area networks (WLAN). The effect of application-based signal strength threshold (ASST) and path loss exponent on an adaptive lifetime-based vertical handoff (ALIVE-HO) strategy is studied in terms of number of handoffs, aggregated throughput, and packet delay. Therefore the vertical handoff performance can be optimized in wireless and mobile networks. The present work is done for different channel conditions as well as different mobility schemes.