Pricing for QoS-based wireless data services and its impact on radio resource management

The use of cellular networks for both voice and data communications is growing at a rapid pace throughout the world. Such growth was initially fueled by the need for mobile voice communication. However, with the advent of 2G networks and now with 3G networks, data services are quickly outpacing that of voice. Normally such growth is welcomed since it results in increased revenue for the wireless operator. However, unlike wireline networks for which capacity can easily be increased, the capacity of wireless networks is limited. The load that can be sustained by a wireless network depends on various factors but the major ones are cell size, bandwidth and spectral efficiency. Each of these have limits and so as the demand for data services increases, the pricing and allocation of the limited available resources become increasingly more important. In this paper we address the impact that limited resources have on pricing and how, in turn, radio resource management algorithms are affected. The emphasis in this work is on the overall framework aspects and not on the designs of the individual radio resource management algorithms.