Autonomic and decentralized management of wireless access networks

In this article, we apply autonomic and distributed management principles to wireless access networks. Most interesting is the application of autonomic properties and behaviors including adaptive, aware, and automatic operation in a decentralized setting. In particular, we present a generic and autonomic management architecture for decentralized management of wireless access networks, such as GERAN/UTRAN, E-UTRAN, WiMAX or WLAN. For evaluation purposes, we apply this architecture to the management of a Wireless LAN network, and we evaluate the architecture and some of the autonomic management functions through simulations, a prototype implementation and the setup of a real-world testbed for experimentation with the proposed management approach.