Optimising Resource Efficiency in Future Mobile Communications

移动通信系统的设计（由研究人员）、操作（由运营商）和街道上的人们使用变得越来越复杂。手机用户现在希望随时随地都能上网，并能以尽可能低的成本获得一系列新服务，以帮助他们的日常生活。目前没有人知道如何评估一个系统在这种情况下是否有效。其原因是涉及的参数数量巨大，这些参数共同影响系统效率。目前的做法是使用这些参数的一个子集来定义局部效率，但这并不能提供整体效率，也不会导致低成本或最佳利用频谱。要实现高效的移动系统，需要考虑和设计三个重要标准。它们是：所提供服务的质量、容量和系统的成本。这些标准中的每一个都分别受到大量参数的影响，其中每个参数都有不同的权重。优化设计需要在三个不同的标准之间找到一个良好的平衡，但目前还没有技术可以使它们一起优化，以提供所需的低成本解决方案。让这变得困难的是，移动系统本质上是动态的，这体现在：用户的移动性范围、广泛的操作环境、具有不同比特率和预期质量的广泛服务等方面。这一切都指向了对具有一定程度适应性的系统的要求，以便系统能够自组织并适应不断变化的条件。目前系统的设计和运行或多或少是在固定的技术和参数上进行的。这些包括空中接口的设计、媒体访问控制、切换算法、小区大小和固定频带分配，这些都会导致资源浪费和昂贵的解决方案。未来的移动系统，在这里讨论，是连续的适应性和可重构的，并自动响应环境和用户需求的条件。只有结合这些因素，才能最大限度地提高效率，并向用户提供所需的低成本新服务。本文所述研究的挑战是如何共同设计如此复杂的网络，以便用户、服务提供商和网络运营商都认为参与未来的移动愿景是高效和经济的。

Mobile communication systems are becoming more and more complex to design (by researchers), operate (by the operators) and used by the people in the street. Mobile users now wish to be always connected, irrespective of time and place, and have access to a range of new services to help him/her in everyday life, all at the lowest possible cost. Currently no one knows how to evaluate whether a system is efficient or not in such provision. The reason for this is the huge number of parameters involved which collectively influence system efficiency. So far the practice has been to use a subset of such parameters to define localised efficiency -- but this does not provide overall efficiency and it will not lead to low cost or optimum use of scare spectrum. There are three important criteria which need to be considered and designed together to achieve a highly efficient mobile system. These are: quality of offered service, capacity and the cost of the system. Each of these criteria are influenced by a large number of parameters individually, where each have different weightings. Optimum design needs to find a fine balance between the three different criteria and yet currently there is no technique available which enables them to be optimised together to provide the required low cost solution. What makes this difficult is that a mobile system is dynamic by nature in terms of: range of mobility of users, wide range of operational environments, wide range of services with different bit rates and expected qualities, etc. This all points to requirements for a system with a certain degree of adaptability so that the system can self-organise and adapt itself to changing conditions. Currently systems are designed and operated on more or less fixed technique and parameters. These include the design of air-interface, media access control, handover algorithms, cell sizes and fixed frequency band allocation which all lead to wastage of resources and expensive solutions. The mobile systems of the future, addressed herein, are continuously adaptable and reconfigurable and respond automatically to the conditions of environments and user demands. It is only by engaging with these factors that efficiency can be maximised and the required low cost new services can be delivered to users. The challenge of the research described herein is how to collectively design such very complex networks so that users, service providers and network operators will all consider it efficient and cost effective to participate in the mobile vision of the future.