Bader Al-Manthari

Congestion Pricing in Wireless Cellular Networks

While the demand for wireless cellular services continues to increase, radio resources remain scarce. As a result, network operators have to competently manage these resources in order to increase the efficiency of their Wireless Cellular Networks (WCN) and meet the Quality of Service (QoS) of different users. A key component of Radio Resource Management (RRM) is congestion control. Congestion can severely degrade the performance of WCN and affect the satisfaction of the users and the obtained revenues. Several congestion control techniques have been proposed for WCN. These techniques, however, do not provide incentives to the users to use the wireless network rationally, and hence they cannot solve the problem of congestion. Recently, there has been some research on providing monetary incentives to the users through congestion pricing to use the wireless network rationally and efficiently. Congestion pricing is a promising solution that can help alleviate the problem of congestion and generate higher revenues for network operators. This paper surveys recent research work on congestion pricing in WCN. It also provides detailed discussions and comparisons of the surveyed work as well as open problems and possible future research directions in the area.

Fair Class-Based Downlink Scheduling with Revenue Considerations in Next Generation Broadband Wireless Access Systems

The success of emerging Broadband Wireless Access Systems (BWASs) will depend, among other factors, on their ability to manage their shared wireless resources in the most efficient way. This is a complex task due to the heterogeneous nature, and hence, diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of different applications that these systems support. Therefore, QoS provisioning is crucial for the success of such wireless access systems. In this paper, we propose a novel downlink packet scheduling scheme for QoS provisioning in BWASs. The proposed scheme employs practical economic models through the use of novel utility and opportunity cost functions to simultaneously satisfy the diverse QoS requirements of mobile users and maximize the revenues of network operators. Unlike existing schemes, the proposed scheme is general and can support multiple QoS classes with users having different QoS and traffic demands. To demonstrate its generality, we show how the utility function can be used to support three different types of traffic, namely best-effort traffic, traffic with minimum data rate requirements, and traffic with maximum packet delay requirements. Extensive performance analysis is carried out to show the effectiveness and strengths of the proposed packet scheduling scheme.

Efficient bandwidth management in Broadband Wireless Access Systems using CAC-based dynamic pricing

While the demand for mobile broadband wireless services continues to increase, radio resources remain scarce. Even with the substantial increase in the supported bandwidth in next generation Broadband Wireless Access Systems (BWASs), it is expected that these systems will severely suffer from congestion due to the rapid increase in demand of bandwidth intensive applications. Without efficient bandwidth management and congestion control schemes, network operators may not be able to meet the increasing demand of users for multimedia services, and hence they may suffer immense amount of revenue loss. In this paper, we propose an admission-level bandwidth management scheme consisting of Call Admission Control (CAC) and dynamic pricing. The main aim of our proposed scheme is to provide monetary incentives to users to use the wireless resources efficiently and rationally, hence, allowing efficient bandwidth management at the admission level. By dynamically determining the prices of units of bandwidth, the proposed scheme can guarantee that the arrival rates to the system are less than or equal to the optimal ones computed dynamically, hence, guaranteeing a congestion-free system. Simulation results show the effectiveness and strengths of our proposed approach.

A performance comparison of class-based scheduling algorithms in future UMTS access

The 3G UMTS is currently undergoing inherent changes. The expected release 5&6 of UMTS will contain a new set of features known collectively as high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). In this paper, we propose two packet scheduling algorithms for HSDPA, shortest queue first (SQF) and longest queue first (LQF), to provide priority scheduling between services of different quality of service (QoS) classes and fairness between users within the same class. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms meet QoS requirements of different traffic classes, with the SQF algorithm having a better performance compared to the LQF algorithm.

Fair Channel Quality-Based Scheduling Scheme for HSDPA System

Channel dependant scheduling schemes for High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) system such as Max CIR and Proportional Fairness (PF) have been proven to provide a significant throughput gain by exploiting the channel fluctuations of the users. However, their inability to ensure a fair distribution of the radio resources among the mobile users has been a major concern. In earlier study [6], we proposed a Fair and Efficient Channel Dependent (FECD) algorithm for HSDPA to provide a priority scheduling between users based on their instantaneous channel conditions and their average throughputs. The FECD algorithm aims at increasing the data rates of the users by exploiting the variations of their channel conditions while at the same time ensure a fair distribution of the radio resources. We evaluated the performance of the FECD algorithm in Pedestrian A environment. In this paper, however, we extended our simulation model to include evaluating the proposed algorithm in Vehicle A environment. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm in both environments outperforms the maximum CIR and the Proportional Fair schemes in terms of providing minimum throughput assurance and, therefore, it has a better degree of fairness.

Dynamic Bandwidth Provisioning with Fairness and Revenue Considerations for Broadband Wireless Communication

The success of emerging wireless broadband communication systems such as 3.5 G wireless cellular systems and 802.16 broadband wireless systems (WiMAX) will depend, among other factors, on their ability to manage their shared wireless resources in the most efficient way. This is a complex task due to the heterogeneous nature and, hence, diverse bandwidth requirements of applications that these communication systems support and the reliance on high speed shared channels for data delivery instead of dedicated ones. Therefore, bandwidth provisioning is crucial for the success of such communication systems. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic bandwidth provisioning scheme for broadband wireless communication. The proposed scheme spans multiple time slots/frames and optimally allocates them to the different classes of traffic depending on their weights, the real-time bandwidth requirements of their connections, their channel quality conditions and the expected obtained revenues. Simulation results are provided to show the potential and effectiveness of our scheme.

Generic Centralized Downlink Scheduler for Next Generation Wireless Cellular Networks

Future wireless cellular networks such as high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) and 1x EVolution data optimized (1xEV-DO) promise to revolutionize the mobile users wireless experience by offering high downlink data rates that are much more beyond what 2.5 G and 3 G cellular systems could offer. In order to support as many users as possible, these systems exploit the bursty nature of the data traffic by utilizing high speed downlink shared channels that are shared among the users according to the packet scheduling scheme being used. However, to support acceptable performance levels especially at peak loads, these systems require much more efficient downlink packet scheduling schemes than ever before. In this paper, we propose a novel generic centralized downlink (GCD) packet scheduling scheme for next generation wireless cellular networks. The proposed scheme utilizes novel utility and opportunity cost functions to satisfy the mobile users as well as the service providers. We show that our scheme converges to two well known schemes, Max CIR and PF. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness and strength of the GCD scheme.

Fair and Efficient Channel Dependent Scheduling Algorithm for HSDPA System

In this paper, we propose a novel medium access control packet scheduler algorithm for high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) to provide a priority scheduling between users based on their instantaneous channel conditions and their average throughputs. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the maximum CIR and proportional fair schemes in terms of providing minimum throughput guarantees and therefore, It has a better degree of fairness

Congestion prevention in broadband wireless access systems: An economic approach

While the demand for mobile broadband wireless services continues to increase, radio resources remain scarce. Even with the substantial increase in the supported bandwidth in the next generation broadband wireless access systems (BWASs), it is expected that these systems will severely suffer from congestion, due to the rapid increase in demand of bandwidth-intensive multimedia services. Without efficient bandwidth management and congestion control schemes, network operators may not be able to meet the increasing demand of users for multimedia services, and hence they may suffer an immense revenue loss. In this paper, we propose an admission-level bandwidth management scheme consisting of call admission control (CAC) and dynamic pricing. The main aim of our proposed scheme is to provide monetary incentives to users to use the wireless resources efficiently and rationally, hence, allowing efficient bandwidth management at the admission level. By dynamically determining the prices of units of bandwidth, the proposed scheme can guarantee that the number of connection requests to the system are less than or equal to certain optimal values computed dynamically, hence, ensuring a congestion-free system. The proposed scheme is general and can accommodate different objective functions for the admission control as well as different pricing functions. Comprehensive simulation results with accurate and inaccurate demand modeling are provided to show the effectiveness and strengths of our proposed approach.

Frame-level dynamic bandwidth provisioning for QoS-enabled broadband wireless networks

The increasing demand for wireless heterogeneous multimedia applications presents a real challenge to mobile service providers. Even with the substantial increase in the supported bandwidth in future broadband wireless systems such as 3.5G wireless cellular networks and 802.16 broadband wireless networks (WiMAX), these systems suffer from the same inherited problem in wireless networks, which is limited spectrum. Therefore, bandwidth provisioning is crucial for the success of such broadband wireless systems. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic bandwidth provisioning scheme for broadband wireless communication. The proposed scheme spans multiple time slots/frames and optimally allocates them to the different classes of traffic depending on their weights, the real-time bandwidth requirements of their connections and their channel quality conditions. Simulation results show that satisfactions of different classes of traffic can be improved by implementing our scheme.