NETCOM Research Group

Wireless networks importance for the Future Internet is raising at a fast pace as mobile devices increasingly become its entry point. However, today’s wireless networks are unable to rapidly adapt to evolving contexts and service needs due to their rigid architectural design.

We believe that the wireless Internet’s ability to keep up with innovation directly stems from its reliance on the traditional layer-based Internet abstraction. Especially, the Link Layer interface appears way too abstracted from the actual wireless access and coordination needs. FLAVIA fosters a paradigm shift towards the Future Wireless Internet: from pre-designed link services to programmable link processors. The key concept is to expose flexible programmable interfaces enabling service customization and performance optimization through software-based exploitation of low-level operations and control primitives, e.g., transmission timing, frame customization and processing, spectrum and channel management, power control, etc.SS

FLAVIA’s approach is based on three main pillars:

• Lower the interface between hardware-dependent layers and upper layers
• Apply a hierarchical decomposition of the MAC/PHY layer functionalities
• Open programmable interfaces at different abstraction levels. To prove the viability of this new architectural vision, FLAVIA will prototype its concept on two wireless technologies currently available, 802.11 and 802.16, representing today’s two main radio resource allocation philosophies: contention-based and scheduled. Moreover, FLAVIA will assess the applicability of the proposed architecture concepts to the emerging 3GPP standards.

FLAVIA’s concept will allow boosting innovation and reducing the cost of network upgrades. Operators, manufacturers, network designers, emerging third-party solution developers, and even spontaneous end users, will be able to easily and rapidly optimize and upgrade the wireless network operation, quickly prototype and test their new protocols, and adapt the wireless access operation to emerging scenarios or service needs.