Autonomic hierarchical reconfiguration for wireless access networks

A novel autonomic area reconfiguration mechanism is proposed to manage the hierarchical arrangement of routing protocols in wireless access networks. The reconfiguration mechanism monitors the traffic and mobility patterns to identify symptoms, which indicate a poor existing area partition. A re-partition algorithm is invoked on demand with the objective to revise the border between neighboring areas in order to achieve more efficient resource management. A centralized implementation is proposed and evaluated by comparison with the equivalent one without the autonomic area reconfiguration capability. Simulations illustrate that the autonomic area reconfiguration mitigate both routing and mobility overhead as well as dropping and blocking rates, suggesting better network performance with rapid response to traffic alternations. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.