Call admission control schemes under generalized processor sharing scheduling

Provision of Quality‐of‐Service (QoS) guarantees is an important and challenging issue in the design of integrated‐services packet networks. Call admission control is an integral part of the challenge and is closely related to other aspects of networks such as service models, scheduling disciplines, traffic characterization and QoS specification. In this paper we provide a theoretical framework within which call admission control schemes with multiple statistical QoS guarantees can be constructed for the Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) scheduling discipline. Using this framework, we present several admission control schemes for both session‐based and class‐based service models. The theoretical framework is based on recent results in the statistical analysis of the GPS scheduling discipline and the theory of effective bandwidths. Both optimal schemes and suboptimal schemes requiring less computational effort are studied under these service models. The QoS metric considered is loss probability. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A neurocomputing controller for bandwidth allocation in ATMnetworks

We propose a new neurocomputing call admission control (CAC) algorithm for asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks. The proposed algorithm employs neural networks (NNs) to calculate the bandwidth required to support multimedia traffic with multiple quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. The NN controller calculates the bandwidth required percall using on-line measurements of the traffic via its count process, instead of relying on simple parameters such as the peak, average bit rate and burst length. Furthermore, to enhance the statistical multiplexing gain, the controller calculates the gain obtained from multiplexing multiple streams of traffic supported on separate virtual paths (i.e., class multiplexing). In order to simplify the design and obtain a small reaction time, the controller is realized using a hierarchical structure of a bank of small size, parallel NN units. Each unit is a feed-forward back-propagation NN that has been trained to, learn the complex nonlinear function relating different traffic patterns and QoS, with the corresponding received capacity. The reported results prove that the neurocomputing approach is effective in achieving more accurate results than other conventional methods that are based upon mathematical or simulation analysis. This is primarily due to the unique learning and adaptive capabilities of NNs that enable them to extract and memorize rules from previous experience. Evidently such unique capabilities poise NNs to solve many of the problems encountered in the development of a coherent ATM traffic management strategy     

Bandwidth allocation and connection admission control in ATMnetworks

Asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) is the transmission format for almost all future communication networks, including broadband integrated services digital networks (B-ISDN). The key feature of ATM is its high flexibility in bandwidth allocation. Instead of reserving capacity for each connection, the bandwidth is allocated on demand. As a consequence, packets (called cells in ATM terminology) might be lost. To guarantee a given quality of service (QoS), some kind of control is needed to decide whether to accept or to reject an incoming connection. A connection is accepted only if the network has sufficient resources to achieve the QoS required by the user without affecting the QoS of the existing connections. In ATM networks, connection admission control (CAC) is responsible for this decision. It is a very complex function because the traffic may vary greatly and have poorly known characteristics. This paper describes CAC procedures proposed in the literature and discusses issues related to bandwidth allocation in ATM networks. It shows that CAC and statistical multiplexing are only needed for certain connections     

Admission control for statistical QoS: theory and practice

In networks that support quality of service, an admission control algorithm determines whether or not a new traffic flow can be admitted to the network such that all users will receive their required performance. Such an algorithm is a key component of future multiservice networks because it determines the extent to which network resources are utilized and whether the promised QoS parameters are actually delivered. The goals in this article are threefold. First, we describe and classify a broad set of proposed admission control algorithms. Second, we evaluate the accuracy of these algorithms via experiments using both on-off sources and long traces of compressed video; we compare the admissible regions and QoS parameters predicted by our implementations of the algorithms with those obtained from trace-driven simulations. Finally, we identify the key aspects of an admission control algorithm necessary for achieving a high degree of accuracy and hence a high statistical multiplexing gain     

Bandwidth allocation and admission control in ATM networks withservice separation

The statistical multiplexing operation within an ATM network node is considered, with respect to different methods for the allocation of the bandwidth of an outgoing link. Service separation is assumed by dividing the overall traffic flows into classes, homogeneous in terms of performance requirements and statistical characteristics. Which share the bandwidth of a link according to some specified policy. This context allows one to clearly define, by means of several existing approaches, a region in the space of connections of the different classes (call space) where quality of service (QoS) requirements at the cell level are satisfied. Within this region, some criteria for allocating the bandwidth of the link to the service classes are proposed, and the resulting allocation and call admission control (CAC) strategies are defined and analyzed. The goal of these operations is to achieve some desired QoS at the call level. Several numerical simulation results are presented, in order to highlight the different performance characteristics of the various methods     

Bandwidth borrowing‐based QoS approach for adaptive call admission control in multiclass traffic wireless cellular networks

This paper proposes a QoS approach for an adaptive call admission control (CAC) scheme for multiclass service wireless cellular networks. The QoS of the proposed CAC scheme is achieved through call bandwidth borrowing and call preemption techniques according to the priorities of the traffic classes, using complete sharing of the available bandwidth. The CAC scheme maintains QoS in each class to avoid performance deterioration through mechanisms for call bandwidth degradation, and call bandwidth upgrading based on min–max and max–min policies for fair resource deallocation and reallocation, respectively. The proposed adaptive CAC scheme utilizes a measurement‐based online monitoring approach of the system performance, and a prediction model to determine the amount of bandwidth to be borrowed from calls, or the amount of bandwidth to be returned to calls. The simulation‐based performance evaluation of the proposed adaptive CAC scheme shows the strength and effectiveness of our proposed scheme. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel approach for supporting deterministic quality-of-service in WDM EPON networks

Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) is viewed by many as an attractive solution to the first mile problem. With the rapidly increasing number of user application, the capacity of current EPON has quickly become insufficient and upgrading its architecture with the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology has become a natural choice. On the other hand, with more and more multimedia applications emerging in the network, providing good quality of service (QoS) to various classes of traffic is a challenge. In this paper, we propose a two-level WDM EPON upgrade solution which implements two main functions: efficient capacity scaling with bandwidth sharing at the first level, and deterministic QoS provisioning at the second level. At the first level, the scheme ensures that a minimum number of wavelengths are used for scaling. At the second level, an integrated scheme including the admission control policies and scheduling discipline is developed to guarantee deterministic QoS for multiple classes of traffic. Three different admission control policies, in particular fixed-proportional, non-preemptive and preemptive admission control, are proposed and a complete study of their unique features is presented. The simulation results show that they could all guarantee deterministic delay bounds for bursty traffic.     

A service-oriented admission control strategy for class-based IP networks

The clear trend toward the integration of current and emerging applications and services in the Internet launches new demands on service deployment and management. Distributed service-oriented traffic control mechanisms, operating with minimum impact on network performance, assume a crucial role as regards controlling services quality and network resources transparently and efficiently. In this paper, we describe and specify a lightweight distributed admission control (AC) model based on per-class monitoring feedback for ensuring the quality of distinct service levels in multiclass and multidomain environments. The model design, covering explicit and implicit AC, exhibits relevant properties that allow managing quality of service (QoS) and service-level specifications (SLSs) in multiservice IP networks in a flexible and scalable manner. These properties, stemming from the way service-dependent AC and on-line service performance monitoring are proposed and articulated in the model’s architecture and operation, allow a self-adaptive service and resource management, while abstracting from network core complexity and heterogeneity. A proof of concept is provided to illustrate the AC criteria ability in satisfying multiple service class commitments efficiently. The obtained results show that the self-adaptive behavior inherent to on-line measurement-based service management, combined with the established AC rules, is effective in controlling each class QoS and SLS commitments consistently.     

QoS provisioning dynamic connection-admission control for multimedia wireless networks using a Hopfield neural network

This paper presents a quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning dynamic connection-admission control (CAC) algorithm for multimedia wireless networks. A multimedia connection consists of several substreams (i.e., service classes), each of which presets a range of feasible QoS levels (e.g., data rates). The proposed algorithm is mainly devoted to finding the best possible QoS levels for all the connections (i.e., QoS vector) that maximize resource utilization by fairly distributing wireless resources among the connections while maximizing the statistical multiplexing gain (i.e., minimizing the blocking and dropping probabilities). In the case of congestion (overload), the algorithm uniformly degrades the QoS levels of the existing connections (but only slightly) in order to spare some resources for serving new or handoff connections, thereby naturally minimizing the blocking and dropping probabilities (it amounts to maximizing the statistical multiplexing gain). The algorithm employs a Hopfield neural network (HNN) for finding a QoS vector. The problem itself is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem. Hardware-based HNN exhibits high (computational) speed that permits real time running of the CAC algorithm. Simulation results show that the algorithm can maximize resource utilization and maintain fairness in resource sharing, while maximizing the statistical multiplexing gain in providing acceptable service grades. Furthermore, the results are relatively insensitive to handoff rates.     

Scalable Quasi‐Dynamic‐Provisioning‐Based Admission Control Mechanism in Differentiated Service Networks

The architecture in a differentiated services (DiffServ) network is based on a simple model that applies a per‐class service in the core node of the network. However, because the network behavior is simple, the network structure and provisioning is complicated. If a service provider wants dynamic provisioning or a better bandwidth guarantee, the differentiated services network must use a signaling protocol with QoS parameters or an admission control method. Unfortunately, these methods increase the complexity. To overcome the problems with complexity, we investigated scalable dynamic provisioning for admission control in DiffServ networks. We propose a new scalable qDPM² mechanism based on a centralized bandwidth broker and distributed measurement‐based admission control and movable boundary bandwidth management to support heterogeneous QoS requirements in DiffServ networks.     

Integration of Explicit Effective-Bandwidth-Based QoS Routing With Best-Effort Routing

This paper presents a methodology for protecting low-priority best-effort (BE) traffic in a network domain that provides both virtual-circuit routing with bandwidth reservation for QoS traffic and datagram routing for BE traffic. When a QoS virtual circuit is established, bandwidths amounting to the traffic's effective bandwidths are reserved along the links. We formulate a new QoS-virtual-circuit admission control and routing policy that sustains a minimum level of BE performance. In response to a QoS connection request, the policy executes a two-stage optimization. The first stage seeks a minimum-net-effective-bandwidth reservation path that satisfies a BE protecting constraint; the second stage is a tie-breaking rule, selecting from tied paths one that least disturbs BE traffic. Our novel policy implementation efficiently executes both optimization stages simultaneously by a single run of Dijkstra's algorithm. According to simulation results, within a practical operating range, the consideration that our proposed policy gives to the BE service does not increase the blocking probability of a QoS connection request.      

Smoothing, statistical multiplexing, and call admission control forstored video

Variable bit-rate (VBR) compressed video is known to exhibit significant, multiple-time-scale rate variability. A number of researchers have considered transmitting stored video from server to a client using smoothing algorithms to reduce this rate variability. These algorithms exploit client buffering capabilities and determine a “smooth” rate transmission schedule, while ensuring that a client buffer neither overflows nor underflows. We investigate how video smoothing impacts the statistical multiplexing gains available with such traffic, and we show that a significant amount of statistical multiplexing gains can still be achieved. We then examine the implication of these results on network resource management and call admission control when transmitting smoothed stored video using VBR service with statistical quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. Specifically, we present a uniform call admission control scheme based on a Chernoff bound method that uses a simple, novel traffic model requiring only a few parameters. This scheme provides an easy and flexible mechanism for supporting multiple VBR service classes with different QoS requirements. We evaluate the efficacy of the call admission control scheme over a set of MPEG-1 coded video tracts     

A dynamic call admission scheme for VBR traffic in ATM networks

The role of call admission control (CAC) in high-speed networks is to maintain the network utilization at a high level, while ensuring that the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the individual calls are met. We use the term static CAC to describe schemes that always allocate the same bandwidth to a specific group of multiplexed calls, independent of the other traffic sharing the link. Dynamic CAC, on the other hand, denotes a scheme in which the bandwidth allocation to a group of calls sharing a queue is influenced by the traffic in other queues destined for the same outgoing link. We propose a generic dynamic call admission scheme for VBR and ABR traffic whose aim is to reduce the blocking rate for VBR calls at the expense of a higher blocking rate for ABR calls. Our scheme is generic because it builds up on a pre-existing static scheme, e.g., one based on a simple notion of effective bandwidth. Our simple approach results in a significant reduction of the blocking rate for VBR traffic (several orders of magnitude), if the bandwidth requirements of a single call are a reasonably small fraction of the link capacity. At the same time, the deterioration of service for ABR traffic can be contained. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Toward a broadband congestion control strategy

The congestion control problem in asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) based broadband networks is defined. In general, a suitable set of congestion controls will include features for admission control, buffer and queue management, traffic enforcement, and reactive control. The leading alternatives for each of these congestion control features are summarized. An approach for choosing the best of these alternatives is presented, and a reasonable set of such alternatives that captures the increased utilization due to statistical multiplexing is suggested. It uses separate and static bandwidth pools for each service category; a statistical multiplexing gain determined for each bandwidth pool that supports a variable-bit-rate (VBR) service category; traffic enforcement on a virtual circuit basis using a leaky bucket algorithm with parameters set to accommodate anticipated levels of cell transfer delay variation; and multilevel loss priorities as well as a reactive control for appropriate VBR service categories based on multithreshold traffic enforcement and explicity congestion notification     

Provisioning of Parameterized Quality of Service in 802.11e Based Wireless Mesh Networks

There has been a growing interest in the use of wireless mesh networks. Today’s wireless technology enables very high data rate up to hundreds of Megabits per second, which creates the high demand of supporting real-time multimedia applications over wireless mesh networks. Hence it is imperative to support quality of service (QoS) in wireless mesh networks. In this paper, we design a framework to provide parameterized QoS in 802.11e based wireless mesh networks. Our framework consists of admission control algorithms and scheduling algorithms, which aim at supporting constant bit-rate (CBR) traffic flows, as well as variable bit-rate (VBR) traffic flows. We first present deterministic end-to-end delay bounds for CBR traffic. We then prove that the delay of VBR traffic can be bounded if the traffic flow conforms to a leaky-bucket regulator. We further study different admission control algorithms for VBR traffic. Our simulation results show that, by taking advantage of statistical multiplexing, much more traffic flows can be admitted.     

Statistical multiplexing and buffer sharing in multimediahigh-speed networks: a frequency-domain perspective

We study the effectiveness of statistical multiplexing and buffer sharing under the multimedia high-speed networking environment. We focus on the impact of frequency-domain source characteristics on dynamic resource sharing. By applying a novel statistical matching technique, we can, for the first time, investigate the multiplexing performance of a wide-range of realistic traffic sources using sophisticated traffic models. It has been shown that the effectiveness of statistical multiplexing and buffer sharing highly depends on the frequency-domain characteristics of the traffic as well as the corresponding QoS requirements. For practical “low-frequency” sources; e.g., VBR-video streams and LAN-to-LAN traffic, we show that significant savings in bandwidth and buffer-space can be achieved via resource sharing under practical loss and delay constraints. These findings re-illustrate the important role of traffic characteristics in the design/selection of network control strategies. The trade-offs among different design alternatives (e.g., multiplexing versus buffering) and the implications on some control schemes, e.g., traffic shaping/input-rate control, are also discussed     

Bounding the performance of dynamic channel allocation with QoSprovisioning for distributed admission control in wireless networks

We investigate the performance of distributed admission control with quality of service (QoS) provisioning and dynamical channel allocation for mobile/wireless networks where the co-channel reuse distance is considered as the only limiting factor to channel sharing. We first provide a QoS metric feasible for admission control with dynamically allocated channels. We then derive a criterion analytically using the QoS measure for distributed call admission control with dynamic channel allocation (DCA). When maximum packing is used as the DCA scheme, the results obtained are independent of any particular algorithm that implements dynamic channel assignments. Our results, thereby, provide the optimal performance achievable for the distributed admission control with the QoS provisioning by the best DCA scheme in the given setting     

Statistical multiplexing and QoS provisioning for real-time trafficon wireless downlinks

Quality of service (QoS) provisioning in wireless networks involves accounting for the statistical fluctuations in the wireless channel quality, in addition to the traffic variability of interest in a purely wireline setting. We consider providing QoS to packetized, delay-constrained (real-time) applications over a Rayleigh-faded wireless downlink. Since the wireless medium is prone to high error rates with typically correlated errors, it is essential to use some kind of link-layer error-recovery mechanism to provide the desired level of reliability. We call this procedure of converting a link with frequent and correlated errors into a near-lossless packet pipe “link shaping.” The link-shaping scheme considered in this paper exploits the natural interleaving provided by packet-by-packet transmissions to different mobiles to break up the error correlations due to Rayleigh fading and employs forward error correction (FEC) coding on the interleaved data. In addition to considering static (peak-rate) bandwidth sharing as in conventional wireless downlinks, we propose mechanisms for statistical multiplexing of traffic, which lead to substantial capacity gains. For example, for 13 kb/s voice sources over a 1-Mb/s link, we obtain a two-fold capacity gain over static (peak-rate) bandwidth allocation     

Admission control in time-slotted multihop mobile networks

The emergence of nomadic applications have generated a lot of interest in next-generation wireless network infrastructures which provide differentiated service classes. So it is important to study how the quality of service (QoS), such as packet loss and bandwidth, should be guaranteed. To accomplish this, we develop am admission control scheme which can guarantee bandwidth for real-time applications in multihop mobile networks. In our scheme, a host need not discover and maintain any information of the network resources status on the routes to another host until a connection request is generated for the communication between the two hosts, unless the former host is offering its services as an intermediate forwarding station to maintain connectivity between two other hosts. This bandwidth guarantee feature is important for a mobile network to interconnect wired networks with QoS support. Our connection admission control scheme can also work in a stand-alone mobile ad hoc network for real-time applications. This control scheme contains end-to-end bandwidth calculation and bandwidth allocation. Under such a scheme, the source is informed of the bandwidth and QoS available to any destination in the mobile network. This knowledge enables the establishment of QoS connections within the mobile network and the efficient support of real time applications. In the case of ATM interconnection, the bandwidth information can be used to carry out an intelligent handoff between ATM gateways and/or to extend the ATM virtual circuit service to the mobile network with possible renegotiation of QoS parameters at the gateway. We examine via simulation the system performance in various QoS traffic flows and mobility environments