Improving call admission policies in wireless networks

It is well known that the call admission policy can have a big impact on the performance of a wireless network. However, the nonlinear dependence of new calls and handoff calls makes the search for a better call admission policy – in terms of effective utilization – a difficult task. Many studies on optimal policies have not taken the correct dependence into consideration. As a result, the reported gains in those studies cannot be confirmed in a real network. In this paper we develop a solution to the problem of finding better call admission policies. The technique consists of three components. First, we search for the policy in an approximate reducedcomplexity model. Second, we modify the Linear Programming technique for the inherently nonlinear policysearch problem. Third, we verify the performance of the found policy in the exact, highcomplexity, analytical model. The results shown in the paper clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.