Time-aware utility-based resource allocation in wireless networks

Abstract

Abstract-This article presents a time-aware admission control and resource allocation scheme in wireless networks, in the context of a future generation cellular network. The quality levels (and their respective utility) of different connections are specified using discrete resource-utility (R-U) functions. The scheme uses these R-U functions for allocating and reallocating bandwidth to connections, aiming to maximise the accumulated utility of the system. However, different applications react differently to resource reallocations. Therefore at each allocation time point the following factors are taken into account: the age of the connection, a disconnection (drop) penalty and the sensitiveness to reallocation frequency. The evaluation of our approach shows a superior performance compared to a recent adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme (RBBS). In addition we have studied the overhead that performing a reallocation imposes on the infrastructure. To minimise this overhead, we present an algorithm that efficiently reduces the number of reallocations, while remaining within a given utility bound.

Utility-based Adaptive Resource Allocation in Hybrid Wireless Networks

“…To evaluate the behaviour of our hybrid network resource allocation scheme we use a traffic mix that is representative for a future mobile communication network, also used in earlier works [6,17,5]. Connections can belong to one of the six application groups presented in Table 1.…”

“…For all experiments the bandwidth allocation/reallocation has been performed with a period of 2 seconds. Further QoS controlling parameters have been kept unchanged from our previous TARA experiments 1 [5].…”

“…In earlier work [4,5], resource-utility (R-U) functions were employed and a Time-Aware Resource Allocation (TARA) scheme was proposed for Quality of Service (QoS) resource allocation in cellular networks. TARA maximizes the accumulated utility of the whole cell (over time) in an adaptive way.…”

“…The utility model used in this paper is the same as the one used in the Time-Aware Resource Allocation scheme (TARA) [5], and enables the allocation algorithm to differentiate between different needs for resource guarantees. This section presents the main concepts of TARA.…”

“…Basically, by modifying the R-U functions [5] we make connections that are new and old, flexible and inflexible, etc., directly comparable. Then, by using these modified R-U functions as an input to an optimised allocation algorithm, we achieve a maximised accumulated system utility.…”