NACR: A New Adaptive Channel Reservation in Cellular Communication Systems

Future Personal Communication Networks (PCN) will employ microcells and picocells to support a higher capacity, thus increasing the frequency of handoff calls. Forced call terminations due to handoff call blocking are generally more objectionable than new call blocking. The proposed guard channel schemes for radio channel allocation in cellular networks reduce handoff call blocking probability at the expense of increases in new call blocking probability by giving resource access priority to handoff calls over new calls in call admission control. Under uniform traffic assumptions, it has been shown that a fixed number of guard channels leads to good performance results. In a more realistic system, non-uniform traffic conditions should be considered. In this case, the achieved call blocking probability may deviate significantly from the desired objective. In this paper, we propose a new adaptive guard channel scheme: New Adaptive Channel Reservation (NACR). In NACR, for a given period of time, a given number of channels are guarded in each cell for handoff traffic. An approximate analytical model of NACR is presented. Tabu search method has been implemented in order to optimize the grade of service. Discrete event simulations of NACR were run. The effectiveness of the proposed method is emphasized on a complex configuration.     

Traffic management in a multicode CDMA system supporting softhandoffs

A traffic management scheme is proposed in a multicode code-division multiple-access system supporting soft handoff that uses guard channels and a queue for real-time traffic. Preemptive queue control gives priority to queued handoff calls. Handoff traffic is derived as a function of the new call arrival rate, the size of the soft handoff region, mobile speed, the new call blocking probability, and the handoff failure probability. System performance with K types of calls is analyzed by introducing a concept of effective channel. The effects of the number of guard channels, the number of effective channels, system capacity, and other factors are numerically investigated. The effectiveness of the proposed queue control scheme is also observed in terms of handoff processing delay     

A distributed adaptive guard channel reservation scheme for cellular networks

In this paper, a distributed adaptive guard channel reservation (DAGCR) scheme is proposed to give priority to handoff calls. This scheme is built upon the concept of guard channels and it uses an adaptive algorithm to search automatically the optimal number of guard channels to be reserved at each base station. The quality‐of‐service (QoS) parameters used are the new and handoff call blockings. Simulation studies are performed to compare the present algorithm with the static guard channel policy. Simulation results show that this proposed algorithm guarantees the handoff call blocking probability to remain below the targeted threshold up to a substantially high offered load with a minimal blocking to new calls up to a moderate offered load and also shows significantly high channel utilization in all offered load conditions. This scheme is examined over a wide range of offered load. Thus, it seems the proposed scheme is very useful in controlling the blocking performances in wireless cellular networks. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On optimal call admission control in cellular networks

Two important Quality-of-Service (QoS) measures for current cellular networks are the fractions of new and handoff “calls” that are blocked due to unavailability of “channels” (radio and/or computing resources). Based on these QoS measures, we derive optimal admission control policies for three problems: minimizing a linear objective function of the new and handoff call blocking probabilities (MINOBJ), minimizing the new call blocking probability with a hard constraint on the handoff call blocking probability (MINBLOCK) and minimizing the number of channels with hard constraints on both of the blocking probabilities (MINC). We show that the well-known Guard Channel policy is optimal for the MINOBJ problem, while a new Fractional Guard Channel policy is optimal for the MINBLOCK and MINC problems. The Guard Channel policy reserves a set of channels for handoff calls while the Fractional Guard Channel policy effectively reserves a non-integral number of guard channels for handoff calls by rejecting new calls with some probability that depends on the current channel occupancy. It is also shown that the Fractional policy results in significant savings (20-50\%) in the new call blocking probability for the MINBLOCK problem and provides some, though small, gains over the Guard Channel policy for the MINC problem. Further, we also develop computationally inexpensive algorithms for the determination of the parameters for the optimal policies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Performance analysis of a dynamic handoff scheme in wireless networks with heterogeneous call arrival processes

The Guard Channel Scheme (GCS) and Handoff Queueing Scheme (HQS) are the popular and practical strategies to prioritize handoff calls in wireless cellular networks. A key issue of giving handoff calls the higher priority is how to achieve a tradeoff among the handoff call blocking probability, new call blocking probability and handoff delay. This paper extends GCS and HQS and presents an efficient handoff scheme that dynamically manages the channels reserved for handoff calls depending on the current status of the handoff queue. A three-dimensional Markov model is developed to analyze the performance of this scheme and investigate the desirable performance tradeoff. The Poisson process and Markov-Modulated-Poisson-Process (MMPP) are used to model the arrival processes of new and handoff calls, respectively. The accuracy of this model is evaluated through the extensive comparison of the analytical results to those obtained from discrete-event simulation experiments. Performance measures in terms of the mean number of calls in the system, aggregate response time, aggregate call blocking probability, handoff call blocking probability, new call blocking probability and handoff delay are evaluated. The analytical model is used to investigate the effects of the number of channels originally reserved for handoff calls, the number of dynamic channels, and the ratio of the rate of handover calls to the aggregate arrival rate on the system performance.     

Teletraffic performance evaluation of microcellular personalcommunication networks (PCN's) with prioritized handoff procedures

Evaluates four handoff priority-oriented channel allocation schemes. These give priority to handoff calls by reserving channels exclusively for handoff calls. The measurement-based handover channel adaptive reassignment scheme (MHAR-A) exclusively uses reserved handover channels for newly originated calls if a certain criterion is satisfied. All four schemes studied differ from the conventional guard channel-based handover priority-oriented channel allocation scheme. To study the schemes, a personal communication network (PCN) based on city street microcells is considered. A teletraffic simulation model accommodating a fast moving vehicle is developed, and the performance parameters are obtained. The performances of all four schemes are compared with the nonpriority scheme and the conventional guard channel-based handover priority-oriented channel allocation scheme. It was found that some of the channel allocation algorithms studied improved the teletraffic capacity over the nonpriority and the conventional guard case. Also, the probability of new call blocking and carried traffic was improved for three of the schemes when compared to the conventional guard scheme. The MHAR-A scheme did not perform up to expectation. Nevertheless, it can be used to finely control the communication service quality equivalent to the control obtained by varying the number of handoff channels in a fraction of one. Increasing the number of reserved handover channels in fraction of one can never be achieved in the conventional guard channel-based handover priority-oriented channel allocation scheme     

Performance Evaluation and Resource Management of Hierarchical MACRO-/MICRO Cellular Networks using MOSEL-2

The paper presents a performance evaluation and resource management of hierarchical MACRO-/MICRO cellular networks using the new Modeling and Evaluation Language (MOSEL-2). MOSEL-2 with new constructs has the ability to find the performance and reliability modeling and evaluation of systems with exponential and non-exponential distributions. A MACRO/MICRO cell structure is solved numerically and mathematically in this paper to handle the handoff calls. Additionally, a simulation program is written to validate these results. In order to reduce the loss probability, a guard channels are introduced at the MICRO cell and channel reservation at the MACRO cell. Additionally, the concept of queuing is introduced where there is a possibility for the handoff calls from both MACRO and MICRO layers to be queued when all the resources are occupied. MOSEL-2 is used to find the numerical solution for this problem with both exponential and general exponential (GE) distribution. The performance analysis show the efficiency of the proposed scheme to manage the handoff calls and the ability of the suggested scheme to reduce the blocking probability of handover calls and the loss probability as the main objective is to block the new connection rather than terminating the ongoing connection as well as balancing the load all over the whole network. It is shown in this paper that there are a set of important factors that affect the performance, such as: reservation policy, channel allocation, handover ratio, capacity of the queue and the variation of the inter-arrival times. These factors are discussed via some important performance measures, such as: new call blocking probability, blocking probability of handover calls, loss probability, utilization and the average delay of the queue.     

基于排队理论的信道分配算法研究

针对蜂窝移动通信系统,基于排队理论提出了一种信道分配方案。该方案将信道分为2部分:语音信道和数据保护信道。预留数据保护信道用于补偿数据丢包率,同时对语音业务设置FIFO排队缓冲器,切换呼叫优先占用缓冲器以确保切换优先。当语音信道空闲时,数据业务可以占用语音信道,一旦有语音呼叫请求到来且无可用语音信道,数据业务应释放占用的语音信道,在数据缓存器中排队等待。仿真结果表明该方案不仅降低了新增呼叫阻塞率和切换掉话率,而且提升了数据业务的性能。     

Analysis of a hierarchical cellular system with reneging anddropping for waiting new and handoff calls

We analyze a hierarchical cellular system with finite queues for new and handoff calls. Both the effect of the reneging of waiting new calls because of the callers' impatience and the effect of the dropping of queued handoff calls as the callers move out of the handoff area are considered, besides the effect of the guard channel scheme. We successfully solve the system by adopting the multidimensional Markovian chain and using the transition-probability matrix and the signal-flow graph to obtain the average new-call blocking probability, the forced termination probability, and the average waiting time of queued new and handoff calls. We further investigate how the design parameters of the buffer sizes and guard channel numbers in macrocell and microcells affect the performance of the hierarchical cellular system. The results show that provision of a buffering scheme and guard channel scheme can effectively reduce the new call blocking probability and the forced termination probability in the hierarchical cellular system, and the effectiveness is more significant in the macrocell than in the microcells     

Design and Analysis of a Channel Assignment Scheme for CDMA/TDMA Mobile Networks

In this paper, a channel assignment scheme is proposed for use in CDMA/TDMA mobile networks carrying voice and data traffic. In each cell, three types of calls are assumed to compete for access to the limited number of available channels by the cell: new voice calls, handoff voice calls, and data calls. The scheme uses the movable boundary concept in both the code and time domains in order to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) requirements of each type. A traditional Markov analysis method is employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Measures, namely, the new call blocking probability, the handoff call forced termination probability, the data call loss probability, the expected number of handoff and the handoff link maintenance probability are obtained from the analysis. The numerical results, which are validated by simulation, indicate that the scheme helps meet the QoS requirements of the different call types.     

Channel Allocation Scheme for Handoff Control in Wireless Ad Hoc Network with Group Mobility

Because a wireless ad hoc network does not have a fixed backbone network and the mobile base station moves randomly, the conventional channel allocation scheme cannot efficiently predict group mobility and is not feasible to support a burst handoff traffic due to group mobility. In this paper, we propose an channel allocation scheme to solve this problem. Our scheme efficiently support burst handoff using guard channel and hello message in wireless ad hoc network with group mobility. We developed an analytical Markov model for the proposed scheme and evaluate our scheme in terms of new call and handoff blocking probability and channel utilization via simulation study. Simulation results show that our scheme offers better performance than the conventional schemes.     

Modeling and performance analysis for soft handoff schemes in CDMA cellular systems

This paper investigates the features of a cellular geometry in code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with soft handoff and distinguishes controlling area of a cell from coverage area of a cell. Some important characteristics of the cellular configuration in soft handoff systems are used to propose a new design of efficient call admission control (CAC) in CDMA systems. Then, the paper constructs a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) model for CAC in CDMA with a soft handoff queue, obtains closed-form solutions, and thus develops loss formulas as performance indices such as the new blocking probability and the handoff dropping probability. In order to determine handoff traffic arrival rate, a fixed-point strategy is developed. Algorithms are also provided to stably compute loss probabilities and to determine the optimal number of guard channels. A new soft handoff scheme-eliminating pseudo handoff calls (EPHC)-is proposed to improve channel utilization efficiency based on mobility information. As an application of the loss formulas, the proposed modeling techniques are used to evaluate and compare the performance of conventional and proposed EPHC soft handoff schemes. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed Markov chain models and the benefits of the new soft handoff scheme.     

Modeling and performance evaluation of a cellular mobile network

An analytic model of cellular mobile communications networks with instantaneous movement is investigated in this paper. This cellular mobile network is showed to be equivalent to a queueing network and furthermore the equilibrium distribution of this cellular mobile network is proved to have a product form. The explicit expressions for handoff rates of calls from one cell to another, the blocking probability of new calls and handoff calls are then obtained. Actual call connection time (ACCT) of a call in this cellular mobile network is characterized in detail, which is the total time a mobile user engages in communications over the network during a call connection and can be used to design appropriate charging schemes. The average ACCT for both complete call and incomplete call, as well as the probability for a call to be incomplete or complete, are derived. Our numerical results show how the above measures depend on the new call arrival process for some specific reserved channels numbers in each cell. The results presented in this paper are expected to be useful for the cost analysis for updating location and paging in cellular mobile network.     

Organizing reserve channels for superior admission control performance

Good execution of seamless handoffs is key to the quality of service perceived by mobile service subscribers. Giving priority to handoff requests is a strategy commonly considered to guarantee low connection loss when performing handoffs. Often, priority systems can be implemented by adopting a pool of reserved (or guard) resources that is available only for calls or transactions being handed over. Most studies published thus far consider that fixed allocation of the guard resources is being employed. This work considers sharing the reserve channels among cells through the use of a particular method of dynamic resource allocation (DRA). It is shown here that the use of DRA on the pool of guard channels affords a great reduction in the probability of handoff failure without affecting the value of the new call blocking probability, thereby improving the quality of service provided by the cellular operator and also increasing system utilization.     

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.     

Actual call connection time characterization for wireless mobile networks under a general channel allocation scheme

Actual call connection time (ACCT) is the total time that a mobile user engages in communications over a wireless network during a call connection. Due to limited network resources of wireless mobile networks, a call connection may be prematurely disconnected and the ACCT for the call in general may not be the same as the requested call connection time (RCCT). The ACCT depends not only on the RCCT, but also on the network resource allocation scheme and network traffic. We characterize the ACCT and related performance metrics for wireless mobile networks under a newly proposed general channel allocation scheme. This scheme generalizes the nonprioritized scheme, the reserved channel scheme, the queueing priority scheme and the subrating scheme in such a way as to reduce the blocking probability of the handoff calls while keeping the ACCT as long as possible. Explicit formulae for the distribution and the expectation of the ACCT are obtained. The call completion probability, the call drop probability, and the average actual call connection times for both the complete calls and the incomplete calls are derived. The results can form the basis for designing better billing rate schemes by differentiating incomplete calls and complete calls.     

Traffic model and performance analysis for cellular mobile radio telephone systems with prioritized and nonprioritized handoff procedures

A traffic model and analysis for cellular mobile radio telephone systems with handoff are described. Three schemes for call traffic handling are considered. One is nonprioritized and two are priority oriented. Fixed channel assignment is considered. In the nonprioritized scheme the base stations make no distinction between new call attempts and handoff attempts. Attempts which find all channels occupied are cleared. In the first priority scheme considered, a fixed number of channels in each cell are reserved exclusively for handoff calls. The second priority scheme employs a similar channel assignment strategy, but, additionally, the queueing of handoff attempts is allowed. Appropriate analytical models and criteria are developed and used to derive performance characteristics. These show, for example, blocking probability, forced termination probability, and fraction of new calls not completed, as functions of pertinent system parameters. General formulas are given and specific numerical results for nominal system parameters are presented.     

Adaptive Resource Management in Mobile Wireless Networks Using Feedback Control Theory

Emerging mobile wireless networks are characterized by significant uncertainties in mobile user population and system resource state. Such networks require adaptive resource management that continuously monitor the system and dynamically adjust resource allocations for adherence to the desired system performance requirements. We propose adaptive resource management technique based on control theory. The controller dynamically solves resource allocation problem using feedback control laws. In the base algorithm, the number of guard channels is dynamically adjusted by feeding back the current handoff call dropping probability. The base algorithm is then enhanced in two ways: feeding back the instantaneous number of handoff calls and by probabilistically implementing a fractional number of guard channels. We study the effects of parameter choices on the performance of the proposed algorithms using discrete event simulation. Simulation results indicate that the feedback controllers can guarantee the predetermined call dropping probability under a variety of traffic conditions, and so can utilize the scarce wireless resource efficiently by accepting more new calls.     

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.     

Fixed and dynamic bandwidth allocation strategies for wireless mobile integrated services networks

Performance evaluation of two bandwidth allocation strategies in wireless mobile integrated services networks is carried out. Performances of the proposed strategies are compared with those of the traditional guard channels and threshold strategies. In the study, a single wireless cell which is accessed by voice and non-voice traffic types producing, respectively narrowband and wideband calls is considered. In the proposed strategies a number of channels are reserved in a fixed or dynamic fashion for the use of originating wideband calls in addition to the guard channels allocated for the handoff calls. The results indicate that the two strategies have comparable advantages and by manipulating the number of reserved channels, desired performance levels can be achieved. The dynamic reservation based strategy makes the system fairer for the originating wideband calls while maintaining low handoff dropping probability and acceptable channel utilization levels. On the other hand, the fixed reservation strategy provides a lower handoff call dropping at comparable channel utilization levels. The tradeoff is between improving the handoff call dropping versus the originating wideband call blocking. Both strategies provide better performance for the originating wideband calls compared with that provided by the traditional guard channels strategy.