A cooperative ID for 4G

Abstract

The time for reflections and visions about 4G is getting closer to the X hour, therefore the scientific community has to finally declare how 4G will really look like. Besides various prophetic visions, we have to have a look into the 4G crystal ball and attempt to pragmatically define the forthcoming system by fusing the sociological and the technological perspectives. In this chapter, we have adopted a top-down methodological approach, whose focal point stands in a user-group-centric vision of the wireless world. In this way, we have been able to elaborate some examples of usage scenarios and consequently to derive and interrelate the main key features of 4G. The latter have been then mapped into technical requirements and expectations in terms of system, services and devices, which has finally resulted in a pragmatic definition of the forthcoming generation. At this point, we have identified in cooperation the most promising enabling paradigm of such a definition. In particular, we have listed the main technical benefits of cooperation in wireless and presented a hybrid wireless network model in which cooperation can be easily exploited and successfully started up. Furthermore, we have discussed more practical issues connected to the establishment of cooperation, such as group formation through profile- and location-based attributes, how to trigger cooperation and the consequent types of cooperation established, and what is the user experience with respect to the interactions involved while setting up cooperation. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.