Dependability provisions for a network management platform

Wireless communication systems are moving towards a new era where information technology and communications are approaching the same goal. This goal can be summarized as communication anytime, anywhere and anymedia, where new applications demand for higher and higher data rate. The recently started European IST project CAUTION++ aims to build a capacity and network management platform for increased utilization of present and future wireless systems. The challenge of resource management and mobility support in multiple radio environments, pursued by CAUTION++, unavoidably results in a higher system complexity that deserves special attention. The implication is that issues concerning the dependability of the subsystems composing the CAUTION++ environment need to be explicitly addressed. In fact, behavior correctness, reasonably attained when dealing with simple system components, becomes hard to achieve when complex functionalities are introduced, which have to cope with a variety of external and internal system behaviors. Work is currently in progress on the identification of relevant dependability requirements for the CAUTION++ architecture, and in initial setting up of appropriate architectural solutions for the CAUTION++ most critical components. In Section 2 the logical architecture of CAUTION++ is presented, while the related dependability issues are discussed in Section 3.