Context Awareness through Cross-Layer Network Architecture

Layered architectures are not sufficiently flexible to cope with the dynamics of wireless-dominated next generation communications. Cross-layer approaches may provide a better solution: allowing interactions between two or more non-adjacent layers in the protocol stack. Cross-layer architectures based on purely local information will not be able to support system-wide cross-layer performance optimization, context-awareness, etc. A new cross-layer architecture which provides a hybrid local and global view, using gossiping to maintain consistency has been proposed in [1]. This paper studies the possibilities of context-awareness in communications through this architecture by two examples. The first example uses user-centric context to control the available link-bandwidth and satisfy user accordingly. The second uses contextual information to control the transmission power of a mobile node.