End-to-End Adaptive QoS Provisioning over GPRS Wireless Mobile Network

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) offers performance guaranteed packet data services to mobile users over wireless frequency-division duplex links with time division multiple access, and core packet data networks. This paper presents a dynamic adaptive guaranteed Quality-of-Service (QoS) provisioning scheme over GPRS wireless mobile links by proposing a guaranteed QoS media access control (GQ-MAC) protocol and an accompanying adaptive prioritized-handoff call admission control (AP-CAC) protocol to maintain GPRS QoS guarantees under the effect of mobile handoffs. The GQ-MAC protocol supports bounded channel access delay for delay-sensitive traffic, bounded packet loss probability for loss-sensitive traffic, and dynamic adaptive resource allocation for bursty traffic with peak bandwidth allocation adapted to the current queue length. The AP-CAC protocol provides dynamic adaptive prioritized admission by differentiating handoff requests with higher admission priorities over new calls via a dynamic multiple guard channels scheme, which dynamically adapts the capacity reserved for dealing with handoff requests based on the current traffic conditions in the neighboring radio cells. Integrated services (IntServ) QoS provisioning over the IP/ATM-based GPRS core network is realized over a multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) architecture, and mobility is supported over the core network via a novel mobile label-switching tree (MLST) architecture. End-to-end QoS provisioning over the GPRS wireless mobile network is realized by mapping between the IntServ and GPRS QoS requirements, and by extending the AP-CAC protocol from the wireless medium to the core network to provide a unified end-to-end admission control with dynamic adaptive admission priorities.     

Efficient QoS Provisioning for Adaptive Multimedia in Mobile Communication Networks by Reinforcement Learning

The scarcity and large fluctuations of link bandwidth in wireless networks have motivated the development of adaptive multimedia services in mobile communication networks, where it is possible to increase or decrease the bandwidth of individual ongoing flows. This paper studies the issues of quality of service (QoS) provisioning in such systems. In particular, call admission control and bandwidth adaptation are formulated as a constrained Markov decision problem. The rapid growth in the number of states and the difficulty in estimating state transition probabilities in practical systems make it very difficult to employ classical methods to find the optimal policy. We present a novel approach that uses a form of discounted reward reinforcement learning known as Q-learning to solve QoS provisioning for wireless adaptive multimedia. Q-learning does not require the explicit state transition model to solve the Markov decision problem; therefore more general and realistic assumptions can be applied to the underlying system model for this approach than in previous schemes. Moreover, the proposed scheme can efficiently handle the large state space and action set of the wireless adaptive multimedia QoS provisioning problem. Handoff dropping probability and average allocated bandwidth are considered as QoS constraints in our model and can be guaranteed simultaneously. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in adaptive multimedia mobile communication networks. This work is based in part on a paper presented at BroadNet's 04, San Jose, CA, Oct. 2004. Fei Yu received the M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, P.R. China, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, in 2003. From 1998 to 1999, Dr. Yu was a system engineer at China Telecom, P.R. China, working on the planning, design and performance analysis of national SS7 and GSM networks. From 2002 to 2004, He was a research and development engineer at Ericsson Mobile Platforms, Sweden, where he worked on dual-mode UMTS/GPRS handsets. He is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at UBC. His research interests are quality of service, cross-layer design and mobility management in wireless networks. Vincent W.S. Wong (S'94-M'00) received the B.Sc. (with distinction) degree from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada, in 1994, the M.A.Sc. degree from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, BC, Canada, in 2000, all in electrical engineering. From 2000 to 2001, he was a Systems Engineer at PMC-Sierra, Inc., Burnaby, BC. Since 2002, he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, UBC, where he is currently an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in wireless communications and networking. Dr. Wong received the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) postgraduate scholarship and the Fessenden Postgraduate Scholarship from Communications Research Centre, Industry Canada, during his graduate studies. Victor C.M. Leung received the B.A.Sc. (Hons.) degree in electrical engineering from the University of British Columbia (U.B.C.) in 1977, and was awarded the APEBC Gold Medal as the head of the graduating class in the Faculty of Applied Science. He attended graduate school at U.B.C. on a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship and obtained the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1981. From 1981 to 1987, Dr. Leung was a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Microtel Pacific Research Ltd. (later renamed MPR Teltech Ltd.), specializing in the planning, design and analysis of satellite communication systems. He also held a part-time position as Visiting Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University in 1986 and 1987. In 1988, he was a Lecturer in the Department of Electronics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at U.B.C. in 1989, where he is a Professor, Associate Head of Graduate Affairs, holder of the TELUS Mobility Industrial Research Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Engineering, and a member of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems. His research interests are in the areas of architectural and protocol design and performance analysis for computer and telecommunication networks, with applications in satellite, mobile, personal communications and high speed networks. Dr. Leung is a Fellow of IEEE and a voting member of ACM. He is an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He has served on the technical program committees of numerous conferences, and is serving as the Technical Program Vice-Chair of IEEE WCNC 2005.     

A Call Admission Control Mechanism Using Mobility Graph in Mobile Multimedia Networks

One of the important issues in providing efficient multimedia traffic on a mobile computing environment is to guarantee the mobile host (client) with consistent QoS (Quality of Service). However, the QoS negotiated between the client and the network in one cell may not be honored due to client mobility, causing hand-offs between cells. In this paper, a call admission control mechanism is proposed to provide a consistent QoS guarantee for multimedia traffic on a mobile computing environment. Each cell can reserve fractional bandwidth for hand-off calls to its adjacent cells. It is important to determine the right amount of bandwidth reserved for hand-off calls because the blocking probability of new calls may increase if the amount of reserved bandwidth is more than necessary. An adaptive bandwidth reservation based on a mobility graph and a 2-tier cell structure is proposed to determine the amount of bandwidth to be reserved in the cell and to control dynamically its amount according to network conditions. We also propose a call admission control based on this bandwidth reservation and ``next-cell prediction' scheme using a mobility graph. In order to evaluate the performance of our call admission control mechanism, we measure metrics such as blocking probability of new calls, dropping probability of hand-off calls, and bandwidth utilization. The simulation results show that the performance of our mechanism is superior to that of existing mechanisms such as NR-CAT2, FR-CAT2, and AR-CAT2.     

Bandwidth Adaptation Algorithms for Adaptive Multimedia Services in Mobile Cellular Networks

The fluctuation of available link bandwidth in mobilecellular networks motivates the study of adaptive multimediaservices, where the bandwidth of an ongoing multimedia call can bedynamically adjusted. We analyze the diverse objectives of theadaptive multimedia framework and propose two bandwidth adaptationalgorithms (BAAs) that can satisfy these objectives. The firstalgorithm, BAA-RA, takes into consideration revenue and``anti-adaptation' where anti-adaptation means that a user feelsuncomfortable whenever the bandwidth of the user's call ischanged. This algorithm achieves near-optimal total revenue withmuch less complexity compared to an optimal BAA. The secondalgorithm, BAA-RF, considers revenue and fairness, and aims at themaximum revenue generation while satisfying the fairnessconstraint defined herein. Comprehensive simulation experimentsshow that the difference of the total revenue of BAA-RA and thatof an optimal BAA is negligible. Also, numerical results revealthat there is a conflicting relationship between anti-adaptationand fairness.     

An Efficient and Adaptive Bandwidth Allocation Scheme for Mobile Wireless Networks Using an On-Line Local Estimation Technique

The next generation of mobile wireless networks has to provide the quality-of-service (QoS) for a variety of applications. One of the key generic QoS parameters is the call dropping probability, which has to be maintained at a predefined level independent of the traffic condition. In the presence of bursty data and the emerging multimedia traffic, an adaptive and dynamic bandwidth allocation is essential in ensuring this QoS. The paradox, however, is that all existing dynamic bandwidth allocation schemes require the prior knowledge of all traffic parameters or/and user mobility parameters. In addition, most proposals require extensive status information exchange among cells in order to dynamically readjust the control parameters, thus making them difficult to be used in actual deployment.In this paper, we introduce a novel adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme which estimates dynamically the changing traffic parameters through local on-line estimation. Such estimations are restricted to each individual cell, thus completely eliminating the signaling overhead for information exchange among cells. Furthermore, we propose the use of a probabilistic control policy, which achieves a high channel utilization, and leads to an effective and stable control. Through simulations, we show that our proposed adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme can guarantee the predetermined call dropping probability under changing traffic conditions while at the same time achieving a high channel utilization.     

Non-Uniform Traffic Issues in DCA Wireless Multimedia Networks

Wireless networks that utilize dynamic channel allocation (DCA) are known to perform better than those with fixed channel allocation, in terms of the call level QoS measures such as the handoff dropping probability. On account of this, the DCA networks are usually designed without the call admission control (CAC). However, given the decrease of cell sizes, together with ever increasing mobile phone and terminal population, dynamic channel allocation policies (such as channel borrowing) may not be sufficient to cope with the hot-spot area size and its traffic intensity. This paper analyses the performance of the DCA networks, both with and without the call admission control, under the hot-spot traffic regime. In such cases, the pure DCA approach fails to ensure sufficiently low level of QoS in both the hot-spot area and the surrounding cells. We propose a CAC policy that can stabilize the QoS under non-uniform traffic, whilst being easy to integrate in the distributed DCA policies.     

MAQF:一种新的移动Ad-Hoc网络自适应QoS结构框架

链路的时变特性及节点移动的无规则性是造成移动Ad-Hoc网络QoS保障难以实现的根本原因，针对这一难题，本文在对INSIGNIA结构框架进行个性的基础上，通过增加动态资源调整、QoS路由及MAC层QoS保障等组件和机制，提出了一种新的自适应QoS结构框架MAQF。此外，本文还涉及及移动接入时的QoS保障问题，并对动态资源调整算法进行了详细阐述。仿真结果表明，MAQF可以更好地适应网络环境的动态变化。     

QoS Provisioning with New Effective Bandwidth/Buffer Calculation Scheme in Wireless IP Networks

The huge commercial success of mobile telephony, the phenomenal growth of Internet users, the popularity of IP-based multimedia applications are the major driving forces behind third-generation (3G), ongoing Byond 3G (B3G), and forth-genertion (4G) evolution. 3G brought wired applications, both data and multimedia, into wireless environments. It operates on IP-based infrastructures to provide wider service access capability. To support and satisfy QoS (Quality of Service) of diverse IP-based multimedia applications, traffic management, such as Connection Admission Control (CAC) and resource allocation, becomes essential. CAC and resource allocation are computationally complex when combined with QoS guarantee for traffic with different characteristics. However, CAC and resource allocation are real-time traffic control procedures. Hence, processing load should be minimized to reduce delay. At the same time, network resources should be utilized efficiently to accommodate more users. However, reducing processing load and obtaining high resource utilization efficiency has been considered to be contradictory matter. In addition, CAC and resource allocation schemes which consider multiple QoS criteria – loss and delay – simultaneously have not been adequately studied. Simultaneous QoS consideration is important to satisfy stringent and diverse QoS requirements of multimedia traffic. In this paper, we propose a nobel effective bandwidth/buffer calculation method based on a virtual channel/buffer analysis scheme. We show that our method can achieve high resource utilization efficiency with reduced processing load. Moreover, we show that our scheme allows for simultaneous consideration of multiple QoS criteria, loss and delay.     

Adaptive Rate Control and QoS Provisioning in Direct Broadcast Satellite Networks

Adaptive rate control, if properly employed, is an effective mechanism to sustain acceptable levels of Quality of Service (QoS) in wireless networks where channel and traffic conditions vary over time. In this paper we present an adaptive rate (source and channel) control mechanism, developed as part of an Adaptive Resource Allocation and Management (ARAM) algorithm, for use in Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) networks. The algorithm performs admission control and dynamically adjusts traffic source rate and Forward Error Correction (FEC) rate in a co-ordinated fashion to satisfy QoS requirements. To analyze its performance, we have simulated the adaptive algorithm with varying traffic flows and channel conditions. The traffic flow is based on a variable bit rate (VBR) source model that represents Motion Picture Expert Group (MPEG) traffic fluctuations while the DBS channel model is based on a two-state Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel. For measures of performance, the simulator quantifies throughput, frame loss due to congestion during transmission as well as QoS variations due to channel (FEC) and source (MPEG compression and data transmission) rate changes. To show the advantage of the adaptive FEC mechanism, we also present the performance results when fixed FEC rates are employed. The results indicate significant throughput and/or quality gains are possible when the FEC/source pairs are adjusted properly in co-ordination with source rate changes.     

多业务CDMA系统快速自适应呼叫准入控制算法

为了保证干扰受限多业务CDMA移动通信系统工作稳定可靠,必须有效、快速、准确地控制接入系统中的各类业务的用户数目,这一任务由呼叫准入控制(CAC)算法来完成.本文提出的基于门限比较的快速自适应CAC (FACAC)算法与传统的同类算法相比,具有判决速度快、判决精度高、门限自适应和简单易行等特点.仿真结果验证了理论推导的正确性,表明FACAC算法的中断特性优于传统CAC算法60%以上,系统服务等级(GoS)优23%左右(系统业务负荷较高时).     

Aggregate History of User Mobility Pattern for QoS Provisioning in Multimedia Wireless Networks

Multimedia traffic is expected to be included in the next generation of wireless networks. As in wireline networks, the wireless network must also be capable of providing guaranteed quality-of-service (QoS) over the lifetime of mobile connections. In this paper, a bandwidth reservation scheme incorporating a user mobility prediction is proposed to manage the QoS of the networks. The mobility prediction scheme is developed based on the aggregate history of mobile users. Based on the mobility prediction, bandwidth is reserved to guarantee the uninterrupted handoff process. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can guarantee the required QoS requirements in terms of handoff call dropping probability and new call blocking probability while maintaining efficient bandwidth utilization.     

Call Level QoS Performance under Variable User Mobilities in Wireless Networks

The concept of adaptive admission control in cellular wireless networks ensures quality of service by reserving bandwidth for handoff calls. It is equally important in current second generation wireless systems as well as in the future IMT-2000 and UMTS systems. In order to ensure bounded call level QoS we propose to track the changes of the handoff call arrival rate and integrate this information in the admission algorithm. However, the handoff call arrival rate can vary when the new call arrival rate and/or user mobility vary. In our previous work we have analysed bandwidth reservation techniques needed to maintain a stable call level QoS when new call arrival rate is changing in a group, or groups, of wireless cells. This paper analyses bandwidth reservation techniques that are adaptive to the user mobility as well as to the changing new call arrival rate, and which can ensure stable call level QoS over a range of user mobilities. We also propose the technique to derive bandwidth reservation policy when the QoS characteristics over a range of user mobilities are given.     

Admission Control Algorithms for Revenue Optimization with QoS Guarantees in Mobile Wireless Networks

We propose and analyze call admission control algorithms integrated with pricing for revenue optimization with QoS guarantees to serve multiple service classes in mobile wireless networks. Traditional admission control algorithms make acceptance decisions for new and handoff calls to satisfy certain QoS constraints such as the dropping probability of handoff calls and the blocking probability of new calls being lower than a pre-specified threshold. We analyze a class of partitioning and threshold-based admission control algorithms that make acceptance/rejection decisions not only to satisfy QoS requirements but also to optimize the revenue of the system by taking prices and arrival/departure information of service calls into account. We show that for a “charge-by-time” pricing scheme, there exist optimal resource allocation settings under which the partitioning and threshold-based admission control algorithms would produce the maximum revenue obtainable by the system without sacrificing QoS requirements. Further, we develop a new hybrid admission control algorithm which outperforms both partitioning and threshold-based admission control algorithms over a wide range of input parameters characterizing the operating environment and service workload conditions. Methods for utilizing of the analysis results for realtime admission control for revenue optimization with QoS guarantees are described with numerical data given to demonstrate the applicability.     

Architecture and Algorithms for Scalable Mobile QoS

Supporting Quality of Service (QoS) is an important objective for future mobile systems, and requires resource reservation and admission control to achieve. In this paper, we introduce an admission control scheme termed Virtual Bottleneck Cell, an approach designed to scale to many users and handoffs, while simultaneously controlling hot spots. The key technique is to hierarchically control an aggregated virtual system, ensuring QoS objectives are satisfied in the underlying system without per-user resource management such as advanced reservations of bandwidth in a user's predicted future locations. We develop a simple analytical model to study the system and illustrate several key components of the approach, such as balancing the conflicting design objectives of high utilization, scalability, and ensured QoS. We formulate the problem of clustering cells into virtual system as an optimization problem and propose a heuristic adaptive clustering algorithm as a practical solution. Finally, we evaluate the scheme by developing a simple analytical model, devising an optimal off-line algorithm, and performing simulations of a two-dimensional network.     

Power Control Based QoS Provisioning for Multimedia in W-CDMA

Third generation wireless communication systems will support multimedia, and W-CDMA will be the common air interface technology. Due to the interference limited nature of CDMA, power is the main resource of the network, and power control is a means of resource management. In this article, we introduce Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS) as a framework which employs power control for QoS provisioning of multimedia traffic in W-CDMA. In DRS, we propose the application of optimal power assignment to the W-CDMA architecture, and we also suggest several implementation strategies. A simulation model of the Japanese W-CDMA standard (ARIB) has been developed for performance evaluation. The DRS framework is shown to accommodate different service classes efficiently by optimal resource management. Quantitative advantages are proven in terms of gains in capacity, throughput, power saving and QoS stability.     

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.     

无线移动传感器网络自适应体系结构的设计

随着无线网络技术的日益成熟及其对小型、微型移动设备的支持,无线移动传感器网络已经逐渐成为一个研究的热点。主要讨论了为无线移动传感器网络设计的一个自适应的体系结构。在该体系结构中,使用了一个区域和核心路由节点相结合的多层结构的方法来增加无线移动网络的信息传输能力、可扩充性和可靠性,并降低网络的能耗,这样就可以适应无线移动网络的高度动态性和移动性。     

QoS Provisioning in Wireless IP Networks

This paper deals with quality of service (QoS) provision in wireless IP networks. QoS provision is particularly challenging in wireless networks, where network resources are generally limited, variable over time and shared. In the design of possible measures to assure QoS one should consider that standardization is well established for the network layer Internet Protocol and for many underlying technologies of frequent use (e.g. IEEE 802.11, BLUETOOTH or HIPERLAN II). Therefore, as far as research on QoS is concerned, there is little room in both the IP and the link-layers for improved IP over wireless interfaces. In this paper we illustrate a solution in which an intermediate Wireless Adaptation Layer (WAL) is transparently interposed between the IP layer and specific link-layer technologies as a solution to provide QoS. The WAL addresses two main issues: (i) compensation for channel impairments in different platforms in order to enhance wireless channel reliability and (ii) implementation of traffic control and packet scheduling mechanisms to satisfy bandwidth and delay requirements, as well as to enforce a general principle of fairness among the IP associations contending for network resources and achieve optimal exploitation of transmission capacity. The WAL consists of a set of modules, each one in charge of a specific task, which can be enabled or disabled depending on the specific network environment. The novelty of the WAL approach is its capability of adapting itself to different wireless interfaces selecting performance enhancing modules for specific networks. This requires to modify the standard TCP/IP protocol stack by introducing an intermediate layer between the IP layer and the Data Link layer, with performance enhancement purposes. This paper focuses on two modules in particular, namely a traffic control module, which is in charge of performing congestion control and channel state dependent scheduling (CSD) packet scheduling, and a forward error correction (FEC) module, which compensates for channel impairments. This paper presents the proposed architecture provided with these modules and reports some measurements and simulations highlighting benefits resulting from the use of such modules.     

无线移动传感器网络自适应体系结构的设计

随着无线网络技术的日益成熟及其对小型、微型移动设备的支持，无线移动传感器网络已经逐渐成为一个研究的热点。主要讨论了为无线移动传感器网络设计的一个自适应的体系结构。在该体系结构中，使用了一个区域和核心路由节点相结合的多层结构的方法来增加无线移动网络的信息传输能力、可扩充性和可靠性，并降低网络的能耗，这样就可以适应无线移动网络的高度动态性和移动性。     

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.