Mobility Management in a Reconfigurable Environment: the RAMON Approach

Reconfigurability is expected to play a critical role in the research area of Wireless/Mobile Communications, by increasing flexibility, reducing deployment as well as operation and maintenance costs, creating new business opportunities, facilitating enhancements to existing technology, service personalization, etc. On the long way leading to a complete Software Defined Radio terminal, in which a unique programmable hardware is on the fly configured via software download, the RAMON project places itself within a short/medium term time horizon. In this vision, a dual-mode terminal, enhanced with a common software module, is considered, with a massive use of Common Control Functions, limiting the use of system specific functionalities. The focus of the paper is to describe the mobility management developed in this project, providing details for both inter and intra reference environments mobility.