Dynamic threshold-based call admission framework for prioritized multimedia traffic in wireless cellular networks

Next generation wireless cellular networks aim at supporting wireless multimedia services with different classes of traffic that are characterized by diverse quality of service (QoS) and bandwidth requirements. They will use micro/picocellular architectures in order to provide higher capacity. However, small-size cells increase the handoff rate drastically. As a result, it is a challenge to provide stable QoS in these networks. In this paper, we present a novel dynamic call admission control (DyCAC) framework for next generation wireless cellular networks. The framework consists of the following components: (i) a threshold-based bandwidth reservation policy; (ii) a threshold update processing module; and (iii) an admission controller module. In this work, each base station locally, independently of other base stations in the network, differentiates between new and handoff calls for each class of traffic by assigning a threshold to each class according to its QoS requirements. The threshold values change dynamically and periodically in order to respond to the varying traffic conditions. The main feature of the proposed framework is its ability to simultaneously achieve several design goals. Numerical results show that our proposed DyCAC framework can guarantee the connection-level quality of service of individual traffic classes while maximizing resource utilization. As well, DyCAC requires low communication overhead, and is highly scalable.