Exploiting user profiles to support differentiated services in next-generation wireless networks

Abstract

In the next-generation wireless network, user profiles such as the location, the velocity (both speed and direction), and the resource requirements of the mobile device can be accurately determined and maintained by the network on a per-user basis. We investigate the design of a wireless network architecture that exploits user profiles to maximize network efficiency and provide better quality-of-service (QoS) to different classes of users. In this article we provide implementation guidelines of such an architecture for the third-generation partnership project (3GPP) network. The key underlying primitive of the architecture is the use of both real-time and aggregate user profiles to perform advance resource reservation in the handoff target cells of the wireless cellular network. We identify various factors that can influence the efficiency of the resource reservation scheme, and through a simulation analysis of an example scenario we show the impact of these factors on the QoS that profiled users receive. The example scenario comprises two service classes: a high cost, profiled service with higher QoS; and a lower cost, non-profiled service with best-effort QoS. The results show that high QoS can be guaranteed to users who subscribe to the profiled service.