A Framework for Design and Evaluation of Admission Control Algorithms in Multi-Service Mobile Networks

Supporting Quality of Service (QoS) in mobile networks requires that admission control algorithms incorporate user mobility, and limit the probability that sufficient resources are unavailable when a user must handoff. In this paper, we develop a framework for designing such admission control algorithms via three contributions. We first devise a taxonomy to explore the mathematical structure and practical design tradeoffs encountered in developing admission control algorithms. We next introduce the Perfect Knowledge Admission Control Algorithm, which, while unrealizable in practice, serves as a benchmark for evaluating admission control algorithms by using knowledge of future handoff events to exactly control the admissible region. Finally, we perform an extensive set of simulations (including tracedriven simulations) and, applying the Perfect Knowledge Algorithm, we study several admission control algorithms from the literature, identify a number of key system parameters for algorithm design, and quantify the fundamental tradeoffs in complexity and accuracy as revealed by the taxonomy.