NETWORK ARCHITECTURE AND SIGNALING FOR WIRELESS PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

Rhe personal communications concept includes a ubiquitous telecommunic ations network to service both fixed and mobile wireless terminals. Cu rrent centralized cellular network architectures are likely to be inap propriate for management of the anticipated personal communications se rvice (PCS) demand, including the associated signaling arising, for ex ample, from the increase in handoff processing associated with microce lls. A distributed microcellular architecture based on the IEEE 802.6 Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is proposed, and is shown to meet anti cipated PCS needs. A method is presented to calculate MAN coverage in urban areas, and is used to demonstrate coverage of approximately 50 c ity blocks per MAN. A distributed subscriber database architecture is proposed to facilitate call setup, tracking of roamers and handoffs. T o fully utilize MAN bandwidth, a quick method for the head stations to switch on/off isochronous slots is proposed to facilitate adaptation to PCS traffic level variations. Call setup and handoff procedures are detailed. The PCS signaling overhead is calculated to be 15 percent o f the capacity required to carry voice traffic.