A novel hierarchical bandwidth allocation approach in heterogeneous wireless networks

In order to provide high quality of wireless connectivity and seamless service to mobile terminals (MTs), the next generation networks will be an integration of multiple wireless access networks. This will give rise to a heterogeneous wireless access system where bandwidth allocation becomes crucial for load balancing to avoid network congestion and improve system resource utilization efficiency. A hierarchical bandwidth allocation approach, including network-level and connection-level bandwidth allocation, is proposed in this paper. In network-level, bandwidth is allocated aiming at enhancing area fairness and achieving load balancing among diverse areas according to an M/M/1 queue model. In connection-level, the objective of bandwidth allocation is to guarantee fairness among terminals with different modality while satisfying their bandwidth requirement. The system performance of both proposed schemes are evaluated by using extensive simulations.