WRAN Protocol Stack

Hi Friends , Its just attempt of mine to give you the best in short on WRAN Protocol . Wireless Radio
Access Network has now been adopted by many of the leading telecom
operators in past few years.

So Now Without spending much time i am coming Directly on the protocol Architecture between the UE
and the Core Network.

Control Plane between UE and RNC

The Interfaces are layered into three protocol layers basically

1) The Physical Layer
2) The Datalink layer
3) The Network Layer

So now Starting with the top most layer 3 , It consist of Protocol called RRC , Radio Resource Control
which belong to the control plane . the main function of the RRC is to establish the signalling radio bearer
between the UE and the RNC to handle most of the control Signal. The messages like session
management connection management that has nothing to do with the RNC part are transfered on
the NAS , Non Access Stratum link.

Now the layer 2 it is split into two parts basically the RLC , Radio link Control and other MAC , Medium
Access control.The RLC is required to make sure that the messages have correct length by either
segmenting the long mesages or adding padding bits to the short and also to map them on the RRC.
Each RLC is configured by RRC to operate in one of the three modes acknowledgement mode ,
Unacknowledgement mode and transport mode.

The service that RLC layer provide in the control plane is called Signalling Radio bearer and in user plane
it is called Radio Bearer. The type of data that is transported define the logical channels . They are
divided into two groups Control Channel and Traffic Channel .
 MAC is a layer two protocol it resides between L1 and the RLC. In MAC the logical channels recieved
from the RLC layer are mapped onto the transport channel. There exist 4 MAC Entities mention below .
1) MAC-b (handle transport channel for Broadcast)
2)MAC-c/sh ( handle transport channel for common channel or shared)
3)MAC-d ( handle all dedicated channel)
4)MAC-hs (handle High speed transpot channels)

Now Lets Discuss something about Iub Interface , The Iub has a application protocol working on that
called
NBAP , Node B Application Protocol it initiates the signalling connection over Iub.
It is divided into two essential component ;
NBAP Common for defining the signalling procedure across common signalling link and NBAP Dedicated
for dedicated signalling link that is signalling related to a specific UE context. The initial request to the
NodeB from the RNC for radio link setup uses NBAP-C but once the context has been setup NBAP-D is
used for then.

SAAL is an ATM Adaption layer that support communication between signalling entities over an ATM link.
i guess you might have little ide of ATM . i will discuss more about ATM in my different blog.
In ATM two type of signalling interfaces are used , UNI user to network interface used for Iub and other
is NNI Network to Network Interface used for Iur and Iu links.

Now i should move towards the core part , The Iur Interface connects the two different RNC . RNSAP is
the signalling protocol defined over Iur it means Radio Network Subsystem Application Part .
The Iu interface connects the RNC to the MSS with RANAP Protocol Radio area network application part.

SCCP , Signalling Connection Control Protocol provide the functionality to transport signalling message
between the SCCP users and also through STP. The SCCP also support GT.

MTp-b3 , is the broadband version of message transfer part layer three it provide network
routing functionality along with link redundancy and load sharing .