Wireless-NGN: the future of communication

Wireless-NGN: the future of communication

Wireless represents the fastest-growing segment of the telecom industry; it is poised to undergo significant technological change as 3G LTE and 4G wireless are emerging at a faster rate.
At the same time, NGNs (Next Generation Networks) represent a fundamental paradigm shift in the wireline and wireless core networks from circuit switching to packet switching.
The two will become highly synergistic over time and wireless-NGN integration will be both technically and economically feasible almost immediately.

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION
Next Generation Networks (NGN) are converged voice/data multi-service networks that operate in a multi-vendor environment. NGN is an architecture that provides seamless integration of both new and traditional telecommunications services across high-speed packet networks, interworking among clients of heterogeneous capabilities.
This architecture is usually structured around four major layers of technology: the core connectivity layer includes routing and switching, network and access gateways; the access and customer-premises equipment (CPE) layer includes the various technologies used to reach customers; the application server layer contains enhanced services and value-added applications; the management layer provides network services and business management functions.

Each of these layers is supported by a number of standards that are key to the successful implementation of an NGN.

The architecture and implementation of the Next Generation Network (NGN) must be based on open, standard-based interfaces and protocols. This is essential to achieve multi-vendor interworking and to accelerate the rate on innovation.
NGN is based on a distributed architecture that helps greatly to reduce the implementation costs while giving flexibility in the actual deployment.

CUSTOMIZABLE SERVICES
The NGN is able to support highly customizable services that are easily and rapidly created as well as deployed economically throughout the network. While it is important to enable new services, it is also critical to preserve the existing services provided by the legacy network.
Next Generation Networks (NGN) technology, is a new initiative created collectively by ITU (International Telecommunication Union), ETSI (European Telecom Standards Institute), and 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) that aims at delivering all these new communication features on a “network agnostic” or otherwise called “heterogeneous networks” communication environment, is one where the only discriminating factors for service provisioning will be the user himself, his selected service types and the desired quality of service (QoS).

A SINGLE SOLUTION
In this respect, the NGN technology provides a single solution for various network types integration, and of all communication technologies it embraces (fixed, mobile, wireless), and addresses the problems in providing service “ubiquity” and “seamlessness” connectivity, besides dealing with issues such as, zero service disruption for moving, roaming, handover users and QoS guarantee among different technology networks with diverse QoS.

Next generation networks have finally been identified as network with the following common characteristics: convergence of various data communication types over the IP, i.e. data, multimedia, voice, video; fixed, wireless and mobile network convergence; access to a common set of services that can be provided over multiple access network types (ADSL, UTRAN, WiFi, WiMAX, etc) with features like user handover and roaming capabilities; IP-based core transport networks; possibility for using any terminal type (PC, PDA, mobile telephone, set-top boxes, etc); seamless terminal, user and personal mobility; user-driven service creation environments; common set of services, admission policies, authentication type, always possible network accessibility regardless of the user connection type to the network.

Migration of mobile networks to NGN is driven by the enhanced capability of 3G UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service) access networks and standardization process is more elaborate as for fixed networks case.

MIGRATION SPEED
Speed of this migration will depend on widespread acceptance and appropriation of new services by end-users; but also on the maturity of the newly introduced technologies.