Channel Sharing Scheme for Packet-Switched Cellular Networks

In this paper, we study an approach for sharing channels to improve network utilization in packet-switched cellular networks. Our scheme exploits unused resources in neighboring cells without the need for global coordination. We formulate a minimax approach to optimizing the allocation of channels in this sharing scheme. We develop a measurement-based distributed algorithm to achieve this objective and study its convergence. We illustrate, via simulation results, that the distributed channel sharing scheme performs significantly better than the fixed channel scheme over a wide variety of traffic conditions. This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation through grants ECS-0098089, ANI-0099137, ANI-0207892, ANI-9805441, ANI-0099137, and ANI-0207728, and by an Indiana 21st century grant. A conference version of this paper appeared in INFOCOM 99. This work was done when all the authors were at Purdue University. Suresh Kalyanasundaram received his Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Masters degree in Physics from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India in 1996. He received his Ph.D. from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue University, in May 2000. Since then he has been with Motorola, working in the area of performance analysis of wireless networks. Junyi Li received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University. He was with the Department of Digital Communications Research at Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1998 to 2000. In 2000 as a founding member he jointed Flarion Technologies, where he is now Director of Technology. He is a senior member of IEEE. Edwin K.P. Chong received the B.E.(Hons.) degree with First Class Honors from the University of Adelaide, South Australia, in 1987; and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1989 and 1991, respectively, both from Princeton University, where he held an IBM Fellowship. He joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University in 1991, where he was named a University Faculty Scholar in 1999, and was promoted to Professor in 2001. Since August 2001, he has been a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Professor of Mathematics at Colorado State University. His current interests are in communication networks and optimization methods. He coauthored the recent book, An Introduction to Optimization, 2nd Edition, Wiley-Interscience, 2001. He was on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, and is currently an editor for Computer Networks. He is an IEEE Control Systems Society Distinguished Lecturer. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 1995 and the ASEE Frederick Emmons Terman Award in 1998. Ness B. Shroff received his Ph.D. degree from Columbia University, NY in 1994. He is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. His research interests span the areas of wireless and wireline communication networks. He is especially interested in fundamental problems in the design, performance, scheduling, capacity, pricing, and control of these networks. His research is funded by various companies such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, Nortel, AT&T, and L. G. Electronics; and government agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Indiana Dept. of Transportation, and the Indiana 21st Century fund. Dr. Shroff is an editor for IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking and the Computer Networks Journal, and past editor of IEEE Communications Letters. He was the conference chair for the 14th Annual IEEE Computer Communications Workshop (in Estes Park, CO, October 1999) and program co-chair for the symposium on high-speed networks, Globecom 2001 (San Francisco, CA, November 2000). He is also the Technical Program co-chair for IEEE INFOCOM'03 and panel co-chair for ACM Mobicom'02. He received the NSF CAREER award in 1996.