A self-adaptive bandwidth reservation scheme for sectored cellular communications

Abstract

Many mechanisms based on bandwidth reservation have been proposed in the literature to decrease connection dropping probability for handoffs in cellular communications. The handoff events occur at a much higher rate in sectored cellular networks than in traditional cellular systems. An efficient bandwidth reservation mechanism for the neighboring cells is therefore critical in the process of handoff during the connection of multimedia calls to avoid the unwillingly forced termination and waste of limited bandwidth in the sectored cellular communications, particularly when the handoff traffic is heavy. In this paper, a self-adaptive bandwidth reservation scheme, which employs a neural fuzzy bandwidth-reserving estimator, is proposed to reduce the forced termination probability. Meanwhile, a channel borrowing technique is used to decrease the new call blocking probability of real-time traffic. The simulation results show that our scheme can achieve superior performance than traditional fixed bandwidth-reserving scheme in sectored cellular networks when performance metrics are measured in terms of the forced termination probability and the new call blocking probability.