Mobile Effective Bandwidth and Its Application to Admission Control in Cellular Packet Networks

Admission control is a key element for providing quality of service in a mobile cellular network. The problem of admission control in packet-switched cellular networks is more challenging compared to their circuit-switched counterparts due to packet-level network interactions. Although packet-based architectures allow for more efficient sharing of scarce radio resources, admission of new connections into the network is more complicated. The concept known as effective bandwidth is a simple yet efficient approach for admission control and resource allocation in wireline networks. This paper introduces the notion of mobile effective bandwidth which extends the classical effective bandwidth concept introduced for wireline networks to cellular packet networks. The main idea is to consider the spacial multiplexing due to user mobility in computing an effective bandwidth for variable-bit-rate connections. Based on this concept, an admission control algorithm is proposed which guarantees a prespecified packet loss probability while achieving zero connection dropping probability. This is a sharp diversion from the existing admission control schemes which can not completely eliminate connection dropping because of the underlying circuit-based architecture. †corresponding author