Mechanisms to Dynamically Configure the Router | Solutions and Recommendations

The proposed WR has been designed for dynamic configuration of its operational parameters. Configuration parameters of a WR are typically related to the site and technology used. Site parameters may be classified as geo-location, network operation, service configuration, and antenna parameters. The technology specific parameters depend upon whether the CDMA or GSM is supported and include technology-specific site parameters, but may be broadly classified into coverage, spectrum, channel, interference, control, and threshold parameters. At a finer level of detail, site Id, number of sectors/beams, sector/beam ID, latitude and longitude, sector/beam location, maximum radius of influence are typical geo parameters. Similarly, network configuration parameters include network interfaces (e.g. Tl, SONET, T3, etc.), site capacity, and network capacity. In the service configuration, we may have the list of various services supported, and the related directory agent (DA) addresses. The antenna parameters listed on a per sector/beam basis include the antenna type, digitized pattern, horizontal/vertical beam widths, max gain, and mechanical and electrical down tilts.

In the technology parameters class, maximum RTD (round trip delay), PER (packet error rate), FER(frame error rate), and percentages of blocked calls, access failures, dropped calls constitute the threshold parameters subclass. The coverage parameters subclass includes environment (e.g. rural or urban), path loss margin, technology specific hardware losses and gains, RF coverage prediction models, and traffic distribution maps. The spectrum parameters subclass consists of channel bandwidth, channel mask, channel number range, and maximum transmit power per channel. The channel parameters include the number of channels in the range, air capacity/bandwidth, minimum channel spacing, frequency use, frequency grouping, and hopping sequences. The interference parameters include interference thresholds, power control thresholds, channelization and sequencing, channel scheduling algorithms, RF interference prediction models, traffic distribution maps, and adjacent channel interference threshold. The control parameters subclass includes access parameters, intra-technology and inter-technology handoff parameters, and timing parameters.

In the following subsection, we present a very high level procedure by which a WR learns its parameters and configures itself in collaboration with its neighbors. The control logic and the operations performed in each high level state could be quite complex with several states for error paths and exceptions. For example, application of RF or IP discovery protocols in the startup state involves considerable information exchange between a WR and its neighbors.