Performance Aspects of Enhanced Radio Resource Management with QoS Differentiation in UMTS Network

Supporting multiple traffic classes with different Quality of Service (QoS) constraints in UMTS System is a tough problem due to the limited bandwidth available on the air interface and over subscribed resources. In order to meet the QoS specification of the different traffic classes, the network resources will have to be allocated appropriately and Radio Resource Management (RRM) strategies with user/service differentiation have to be realised in order to exploit the spectrum in an efficient way under loaded multi service scenario. This paper proposes and analyses RRM strategies for resource allocation and mechanism for QoS differentiation in a mixed service scenario. In particular the effect of prioritization between users/services with different QoS profile is studied in terms of call admission probabilities, dropping and blocking probabilities. It is demonstrated that RRM schemes incorporating QoS Differentiation provides enhanced flexibility and control in meeting the QoS targets and thus results in better overall performance under loaded multi service scenarios. Moreover proposed RRM algorithms with QoS differentiation are inherently suited to handle emergency calls during catastrophic events and preserve the ongoing call during handovers.