Resource request policy for a data user in a CDMA-based wireless network

A data user may request different transmission rates during its connection holding time to reduce its resource usage cost but still meeting QoS requirements. In this paper, the procedure of the resource request for a data user is formulated as a Markov decision process in which the user requests different transmission rates based on its buffer occupancy. The objective is to find an optimal policy (if it exists) that minimizes the expected average cost per unit time. We prove that a stationary optimal policy is monotone in the buffer occupancy for our problem. Numerical examples are provided comparing the performance of the optimal policies with some other policies.