A call admission control for service differentiation and fairness management in WDM grooming networks

We investigate a call admission control (CAC) mechanism for providing fairness control and service differentiation in a WDM network with grooming capabilities. A WDM grooming network can handle different classes of traffic streams which differ in their bandwidth requirements. We assume that for each class, call interarrival and holding times are exponentially distributed. Using a Markov Decision Process approach, an optimal CAC policy is derived for providing fairness in the network. The Policy Iteration algorithm is used to numerically compute the optimal policy. Furthermore, we propose a heuristic decomposition algorithm with lower computational complexity and good performance. Simulation results compare the performance of our proposed policy with those of Complete Sharing and Complete Partitioning policies. Comparisons show that our proposed policy provides the best performance in most cases. Although this approach is motivated by WDM networks, it may be deployed to determine the optimal resource allocation in many problems in wireless and wired telecommunications systems.     

Quality of service‐aware coordinated dynamic spectrum access: prioritized Markov model and call admission control

In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous‐prioritized spectrum sharing policy for coordinated dynamic spectrum access networks, where a centralized spectrum manager coordinates the access of primary users (PUs) and secondary users (SUs) to the spectrum. Through modeling the access of PUs and multiple classes of SUs as continuous‐time Markov chains, we analyze the overall system performance with consideration of a grade‐of‐service guarantee for both the PUs and the SUs. In addition, two new call admission control (CAC) strategies are devised in our models to enhance the maximum admitted traffic of SUs for the system. Numerical results show that the proposed heterogeneous‐prioritized policy achieves higher maximum admitted traffic for SUs. The trade‐off between the system's serving capability and the fairness among multiple classes of SUs is also studied. Moreover, the proposed CAC strategies can achieve better performance under max‐sum, proportional, and max‐min fairness criteria than the conventional CAC strategies. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal Resource Allocation and Fairness Control in All-Optical WDM Networks

This paper investigates the problem of optimal wavelength allocation and fairness control in all-optical wavelength-division-multiplexing networks. A fundamental network topology, consisting of a two-hop path network, is studied for three classes of traffic. Each class corresponds to a source-destination pair. For each class, call interarrival and holding times are exponentially distributed. The objective is to determine a wavelength allocation policy in order to maximize the weighted sum of users of all classes (i.e., class-based utilization). This method is able to provide differentiated services and fairness management in the network. The problem can be formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) to compute the optimal allocation policy. The policy iteration algorithm is employed to numerically compute the optimal allocation policy. It has been analytically and numerically shown that the optimal policy has the form of a monotonic nondecreasing switching curve for each class. Since the implementation of an MDP-based allocation scheme is practically infeasible for realistic networks, we develop approximations and derive a heuristic algorithm for ring networks. Simulation results compare the performance of the optimal policy and the heuristic algorithm, with those of complete sharing and complete partitioning policies.     

Utility‐based probabilistic call admission control for complete fairness in wireless networks

Resource reservation or the other prioritization strategies adopted by Call Admission Control (CAC) schemes in wireless networks lead to unfair resource allocation to users belonging to different service classes (SCs) due to high divergence among the respective call blocking probabilities (CBPs). In this paper, we propose dynamic optimization of probabilistic CAC (P‐CAC) schemes to assure CAC fairness among users of different SCs in wireless networks. The approach is based on users utility combined with fairness optimization, aiming at dynamically determining the probability value in the P‐CAC scheme. This optimal probability is adjusted to network ongoing traffic, CBPs of each SC, prioritization levels characterizing the SCs supported, and the users risk aversion, which reflects their behavior toward the perceived QoS. The existence and uniqueness of the optimal probability that leads to absolute fairness among the users of a wireless network are proven. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal and Structured Call Admission Control Policies for Resource-Sharing Systems

Many communication and networking systems can be modeled as resource-sharing systems with multiple classes of calls. Call admission control (CAC) is an essential component of such systems. Markov decision process (MDP) tools can be applied to analyze and compute the optimal CAC policy that optimizes certain performance metrics of the system. But for most practical systems, it is prohibitively difficult to compute the optimal CAC policy using any MDP algorithm because of the "curse of dimensionality". We are, therefore, motivated to consider two families of structured CAC policies: reservation and threshold policies. These policies are easy to implement and have good performance in practice. However, since the number of structured policies grows exponentially with the number of call classes and the capacity of the system, finding the optimal structured policy is a complex unsolved problem. In this paper, we develop fast and efficient search algorithms to determine the parameters of the structured policies. We prove the convergence of the algorithms. Through extensive numerical experiments, we show that the search algorithms converge quickly and work for systems with large capacity and many call classes. In addition, the returned structured policies have optimal or near-optimal performance, and outperform those structured policies with parameters chosen based on simple heuristics     

A probabilistic approach for fair-efficient call admission control in wireless multiservice networks

The efficiency of call admission control (CAC) schemes in multiclass wireless networks should be evaluated not only with regard to the call blocking probability (CBP) achieved for every service class (SC) supported but also with regard to quality of service (QoS) and network efficiency criteria. In this article, four CAC schemes offering priority to SCs of advanced QoS requirements, based on guard channel policy, are studied and evaluated taking into account fairness and throughput criteria in addition to CBP. For the performance evaluation of the proposed CAC schemes and to examine fairness issues, two fairness indices are introduced along with a throughput metric. The analytical results, validated through extensive simulations, indicate that by appropriate selection of the CAC parameters satisfactory fairness and throughput are achieved while achieving low CBP.     

MDP-based lightpath establishment for service differentiation in all-optical WDM networks with wavelength conversion capability

In this paper, we propose a service differentiation method for lightpath establishment in all-optical WDM networks. The proposed method derives the optimal lightpath establishment policy for each serve class based on a Markov Decision Process (MDP). The optimal policy considered here is to provide service differentiation for lightpath establishment and to utilize wavelengths effectively. Here, we focus on two cases for wavelength conversion capability; full-range wavelength conversion and limited-range wavelength conversion. For full-range wavelength conversion, the number of lightpaths for each class is considered as a state of MDP. On the other hand, for limited-range wavelength conversion, the service class of lightpath that has been established with each output wavelength is considered as the state. Based on these states, we derive the optimal policy for lightpath establishment. In both cases, we evaluate the performance of the proposed method with simulation. In numerical examples, we show that our proposed method can provide service differentiation and use wavelengths effectively regardless of wavelength conversion capability.     

Call admission control in cellular networks: A reinforcement learning solution

In this paper, we address the call admission control (CAC) problem in a cellular network that handles several classes of traffic with different resource requirements. The problem is formulated as a semi‐Markov decision process (SMDP) problem. We use a real‐time reinforcement learning (RL) [neuro‐dynamic programming (NDP)] algorithm to construct a dynamic call admission control policy. We show that the policies obtained using our TQ‐CAC and NQ‐CAC algorithms, which are two different implementations of the RL algorithm, provide a good solution and are able to earn significantly higher revenues than classical solutions such as guard channel. A large number of experiments illustrates the robustness of our policies and shows how they improve quality of service (QoS) and reduce call‐blocking probabilities of handoff calls even with variable traffic conditions. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

业务非均匀分布CDMA系统中一种基于公平性保证的贪婪呼叫接纳控制策略

呼叫接纳控制(Call Admission Control,CAC)是移动通信系统资源管理的主要内容之一。它通过接纳或者拒绝一种用户服务请求,来保持系统的正常运行,是平衡用户服务满意度与系统资源最大化利用矛盾的主要手段。该文主要研究小区间业务非均匀分布时基于公平性保证的动态CAC策略,提出了一种新的CAC策略,可适用于多业务且有变速率(Variable BitRate,VBR)业务的情况。该策略采用贪婪算法,用户请求接入以全系统的预期信干比作为判决条件,从而实现了不同到达率小区之间阻塞率的均衡,保证了用户接入的公平性,对于实际系统的应用具有重要的意义。     

Soft QoS in Call Admission Control for Wireless Personal Communications

In wireless multimedia communication systems, call admission control (CAC) is critical for simultaneously achieving a high resource utilization efficiency and maintaining quality-of-service (QoS) to mobile users. User mobility, heterogeneous nature of multimedia traffic, and limited radio spectrum pose significant challenges to CAC. QoS provisioning to both new calls and handoff calls comes with a cost of low resource utilization. This paper proposes a CAC policy for a wireless communication system supporting integrated voice and dataservices. In particular, soft QoS (or relaxed target QoS) is incorporated in the CAC policy to make compromises among different objectives.Numerical results are presented to demonstrate that (a) in dealing with the dilemma between QoS satisfaction and high resource utilization, how the resource utilization efficiency can be increased by introducing soft QoS; and (b) in accommodating different types of traffic, how the QoS of low priority traffic can be improved by specifying soft QoS to high priority traffic.     

A tabu search heuristic for bandwidth allocation in fixed WiMAX

In this paper, we propose a mathematical model with the aim to give guidelines for the dimensioning of fixed WiMAX bandwidth provisioning service to residential customers. Our proposal relies on the modeling of a CAC policy associated to a priority-based bandwidth sharing strategy. Both mechanisms aim to satisfy Quality of Service constraints while maximizing the gain of the system. But unlike in Khemiri et al. (Optimal call admission control for an IEEE 802.16 wireless metropolitan area network. In: International Conference on Network Control and Optimization, 2007, accepted), we do not necessarily seek here for an optimal CAC policy. We rather consider a coordinate convex CAC policy, whose mathematical modeling leads to a tractable analytical resolution. We chose the Guaranteed Minima (GM) policy, which consists in reserving a specified amount of bandwidth for each traffic class. The remaining bandwidth is shared between all traffic classes. The purpose of the paper is to determine, using an analytical model and a heuristic approach, the nearly-optimal sizes of the GM reservation thresholds associated to each type of connection. The main concern here is to propose simple and robust computational methods, which can be easily and efficiently used to dimension a realistic WiMAX network.     

Efficient bandwidth allocation and call admission control for VBR service using UPC parameters

Provision of Quality‐of‐Service (QoS) guarantees is an important and challenging issue in the design of Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks. Call Admission Control (CAC) is an integral part of the challenge and is closely related to other aspects of network designs such as traffic characterization and QoS specification. Since the Usage Parameter Control (UPC) parameters are the only standardized traffic characterizations, developing efficient CAC schemes based on UPC parameters is significant for the implementation of CAC on ATM switches. In this paper, we develop a CAC algorithm called TAP (derived from TAgged Probability) as well as two other CAC algorithms using the UPC parameters. These CAC algorithms are based on our observation that the loss‐probability‐to‐overflow‐probability ratio tends to decrease as the number of sources increases. By introducing the loss‐probability‐to‐overflow‐probability ratio K, we find that this ratio sheds light on increasing resource utilization while still guaranteeing QoS. Analysis, simulation, and numerical results have shown that the proposed TAP algorithm is simple and efficient. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient algorithms for scheduling multiple bulk data transfers in inter‐datacenter networks

Bulk data transfers, such as backups and propagation of bulky updates, account for a large portion of the inter‐datacenter traffic. These bulk transfers consume massive bandwidth and further increase the operational cost of datacenters. The advent of store‐and‐forward transfer mode offers the opportunity for cloud provider companies to transfer bulk data by utilizing dynamic leftover bandwidth resources. In this paper, we study the multiple bulk data transfers scheduling problem in inter‐datacenter networks with dynamic link capacities. To improve the network utilization while guaranteeing fairness among requests, we employ the max–min fairness and aim at computing the lexicographically maximized solution. Leveraging the time‐expanded technique, the problem in dynamic networks is formulated as a static multi‐flow model. Then, we devise an optimal algorithm to solve it simultaneously from routing assignments and bandwidth allocation. To further reduce the computational cost, we propose to select an appropriate number of disjoint paths for each request. Extensive simulations are conducted on a real datacenter topology and prove that (i) benefiting from max–min fairness, the network utilization is significantly improved while honoring each individual performance; (ii) a small number of disjoint paths per request are sufficient to obtain the near optimal allocation within practical execution time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Bandwidth Efficient Adaptive Call Admission Control Scheme for QoS Provisioning in IEEE 802.16e Mobile Networks

In wireless environment the bandwidth resource is limited and therefore judicious use of the available resources is needed. A bandwidth efficient Call Admission Control (CAC) is proposed in this paper for quality of service (QoS) provisioning for the services defined in IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX standards to satisfy both bandwidth and delay guarantees to the admitted connections. The concept of adaptive bandwidth degradation is introduced to improve the bandwidth utilization (BU) of the system. The proposed CAC scheme is analyzed by Markov Chain model and performance evaluation is made in comparison with fixed step size degradation. Results show that the proposed adaptive CAC scheme has excellent BU under stressed network condition. Also the long term average revenue is calculated for different service flows and for the overall system to see the efficiency of the adaptive CAC scheme.     

Media Independent Handover-based Competitive On-Line CAC for Seamless Mobile Wireless Networks

In Media Independent Handover (MIH), Call Admission Control (CAC) and Vertical Handoff (VH) are two important mechanisms in a Mobile Wireless Networks (MWNs) that consists of various types of wireless networks (e.g., WiMAX and WiFi) and cellular communications (e.g., 3G, 3.5G and 4G). First, an adaptive CAC is needed in base stations for achieving high network reward while guaranteeing QoS requirements. Second, an efficient vertical handoff enables mobile stations accomplishing seamless, fast, QoS-aware mobility in MWNs. In CAC, several studies have proposed the mechanisms: the static resource reservation-based, bandwidth borrow-based and Markov chain model-based approaches. They suffer from moderate performance in Grade of Service (GoS), Fractional Reward Loss (FRL) and transmission quality. In VH, it should consider both the received signal strength (RSS) and the service-class mapping between the serving and target networks. Most studies adopted the integration of a RSS-based method with hysteresis to minimize unnecessary handoffs, but high handoff dropping and low network utilization limit the contributions. This work thus proposes a MIH-based competitive on-line (COL) CAC for vertical handoff in a loosely-coupled MWN. First, in a base station (BS) the COL CAC models the resource occupancy of each wireless network in a MWN as a Markov chain model, and then forms a cost-reward CAC for maximizing network reward. Second, in MS the VH scheme adopts a predictive RSS to predict the moving trend of each mobile station to select the optimal target network. Numerical results indicate that the proposed approach outperforms other approaches in GoS, FRL and the number of vertical handoffs while yielding competitive utilization.     

Performance analysis of resource sharing policies in CDMA networks

We consider an interference‐limited code division multiple access (CDMA) network, in which some of the service classes are explicit rate controlled. Such rate‐controlled service classes include adaptive ones whose holding time does not depend on the sending rate, while the holding time of elastic services becomes longer when their sending rate is slowed down. We develop a Markov model that allows us to study the impact of employing service differentiation (prioritization) during admission control and rate control on the classwise blocking probabilities and throughputs. The admission control takes into account the interference from adjacent cells as a log‐normally distributed random variable and employs service class and state‐dependent (soft) blocking in addition to hard blocking. The state‐dependent rate control algorithm takes into account the minimum and maximum requested rates of admitted sessions in a fairness policy‐dependent manner. Our conclusion is that work conserving bandwidth sharing policies may have a major impact on the moments of the time spent in the system by elastic services, but only a minor one on the classwise blocking probabilities. When the admission control algorithm takes into account the neighbour cell caused interference, the blocking probability of all classes increases somewhat, but the throughput of the accepted sessions increases. Blocking prioritization in the soft blocking model affects the classwise total blocking probabilities but has little impact on the throughput of adaptive and elastic traffic. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Opportunistic call admission control for wireless broadband cognitive networks

Wireless Broadband Cognitive Networks (WBCN) are new trend to better utilization of spectrum and resources. However, in multiservice WBCN networks, call admission control (CAC) is a challenging point to effectively control different traffic loads and prevent the network from being overloaded and thus provide promised quality of service. In this paper, we propose a CAC framework and formulate it as an optimization problem, where the demands of both WBCN service providers and cognitive subscribers are taken into account. To solve the optimization problem, we developed an opportunistic multivariate CAC algorithm based on a joint optimization of utility, weighted fairness, and greedy revenue algorithms. Extensive simulation results show that, the proposed call admission control framework can meet the expectations of both service providers and subscribers in wireless broadband cognitive networks.     

Efficient Packet Scheduling Using Channel Adaptive Fair Queueing in Distributed Mobile Computing Systems

In a distributed mobile computing system, an efficient packet scheduling policy is a crucial component to achieve a high utilization of the precious bandwidth resources while satisfying users' QoS (quality of service) demands. An important class of scheduling techniques, namely, the wireless fair queueing algorithms, have been extensively studied recently. However, a major drawback in existing approaches is that the channel model is overly simplified – a two-state channel (good or bad) is assumed. While it is relatively easy to analyze the system using such a simple model, the algorithms so designed are of a limited applicability in a practical environment, in which the level of burst errors is time-varying and can be exploited by using channel adaptive coding and modulation techniques. In this paper, we first argue that the existing algorithms cannot cater for a more realistic channel model and the traditional notion of fairness is not suitable. We then propose a new notion of fairness, which bounds the actual throughput normalized by channel capacity of any two data connections. Using the new fairness definition, we propose a new fair queueing algorithm called CAFQ (Channel Adaptive Fair Queueing), which, as indicated in our numerical studies, outperforms other algorithms in terms of overall system throughput and fairness among error prone connections.     

Optimal call admission control under packet and call level QoS constraints and effect of buffering

For a single network switch allocating link bandwidth to connections of a single class, an optimal call admission control (CAC) policy is found by the solution of a linear programming (LP) problem. Our optimization differs from previous work in that we include the effect of an output buffer in the switch for the temporary storage of packets bound for transmittal across the link. We find a policy that is optimal in the sense of minimizing call blocking subject to a packet level quality of service (QoS) requirement that limits the packet loss ratio. Such a policy's call blocking probability, if it is small enough to satisfy a call level QoS requirement, then establishes the feasibility of satisfying both the packet and call level QoS requirements for a given call request rate. We show with a previously described example that the addition of even a small output buffer can significantly increase the range of call request rates for which there exists a feasible policy, i.e. one that satisfies both QoS requirements. Also presented is an upper bound, valid for any fixed buffer size, on the range of call request rates for which there exists a feasible CAC policy. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Call admission control for mobile multimedia communications withtraffic asymmetry between uplink and downlink

The call admission control (CAC) for mobile communications is one of the most important engineering issues since it belongs to the category of resource management and the radio spectrum is a very scarce resource. In future mobile cellular systems, the CAC scheme should be efficient for multimedia services as well as for voice services. This paper proposes an advanced CAC scheme for mobile multimedia communications. A characteristic of the proposed scheme is that it takes account of the traffic (load) asymmetry between uplink and downlink in mobile multimedia environments, we evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme using Markov analysis. The performance measures on which we focus are the utilization of resources and the blocking probabilities of handoff calls and new calls. We present some numerical examples with practically meaningful parameter values. As a result, we show that the proposed CAC scheme can be a good choice for mobile multimedia systems such as the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 systems