In this work, we address a joint energy efficiency (EE) and throughput optimization problem in interweave cognitive radio networks (CRNs) subject to scheduling, power, and stability constraints, which could be solved through traffic admission control, channel allocation, and power allocation. Specifically, the joint objective is to concurrently optimize the system EE and the throughput of secondary user (SU), while satisfying the minimum throughput requirement of primary user (PU), the throughput constraint of SU, and the scheduling and power control constraints that must be considered. To achieve these goals, our algorithm independently and simultaneously makes control decisions on admission and transmission to maximize a joint utility of EE and throughput under time-varying conditions of channel and traffic without a priori knowledge. Specially, the proposed scheduling algorithm has polynomial time efficiency, and the power control algorithms as well as the admission control algorithm involved are simply threshold-based and thus very computationally efficient. Finally, numerical analyses show that our proposals achieve both system stability and optimal utility.

The recent switch from analog to digital TV broadcasting around the world has led to the development of communications standards that consider the use of TV White Spaces (TVWS). One such standard is the IEEE 802.22 wireless regional area network (WRAN), which considers the use of TVWS to provide broadband wireless services over long transmission links, and therefore presents an opportunity to bring connectivity and data-based services from urban to rural areas. Services that could greatly benefit from the deployment of wireless broadband data links between urban and rural areas are those related to telemedicine and m-health. To enable proper telemedicine service delivery from urban (e.g. an urban hospital) to rural locations (e.g. a rural clinic) it is of paramount importance to provide a certain quality of service (QoS) level. In this context, QoS provisioning for telemedicine applications over wireless networks presents a major challenge that must be addressed to fulfill the potential that rural wireless telemedicine has to offer. In this paper, a cross-layer approach combining medium access control (MAC) and application (APP) layers is proposed with the aim of reducing blocking probability in teleconsulting services operating over IEEE802.22/WRANs. At the APP layer, a teleconsulting traffic profile based on utilization rates is defined. On the other hand, at the MAC layer, an Adaptive Bandwidth Management (ABM) mechanism is used to perform a QoS-based classification of teleconsulting services and then dynamically allocate the bandwidth requirements. Three teleconsulting services with different bandwidth requirements are considered in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach: high-resolution teleconsulting, medium-resolution teleconsulting, and audio-only teleconsulting. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach is able to reduce blocking probability by using different criteria for service modes within the admission control scheme.

A statistical call admission control (CAC) allows more calls with on-off patterns to be accepted and a higher channel efficiency to be achieved. In this paper, we propose three statistical CACs for VoIP calls with silence suppression considering the priority of each VoIP call, where the call priority is determined by the call acceptance order in an IP-PBX. We analyse the packet loss rates in an IP-PBX under the proposed strategies and express the end-to-end QoS of a VoIP call as an R-factor in a VoIP service network. The performances of the proposed CACs are evaluated using the maximum allowable number of VoIP calls while satisfying the end-to-end QoS constraint, the average QoS of acceptable VoIP calls and the channel efficiency. The advantage of the proposed statistical CACs over the non-statistical CAC is verified in terms of these three performance metrics. The results indicate that a trade-off is possible in that the maximum allowable number of VoIP calls in an IP-PBX increases as the average QoS of acceptable VoIP calls is lowered according to the proposed statistical CAC used. Nevertheless, the results allow us to verify that the channel efficiencies are the same for all the statistical CACs considered.

In emergency situations, telecommunication networks become congested due to large numbers of call requests. Also, some infrastructure breaks down, so undamaged communication resources must be utilized more efficiently. Therefore, several lines in telephone exchanges are generally reserved for emergency calls whose users communicate crucial information. The number of lines reserved for emergency calls is determined by a threshold, on a trunk reservation control method. To accept both required emergency calls and more general calls, the traffic intensity of arriving emergency calls should be estimated in advance, and a threshold should be configured so that the number of reserved lines becomes lower than the estimation. Moreover, we propose that the holding time for general calls should be positively limited. By guaranteeing the holding time sufficient for communicating essential information, holding time limitation reduces long-period calls so more general calls are accepted. In this paper, we propose a new CAC method to utilize undamaged communication resources more efficiently during emergencies. Our proposed method accepts more general calls by collaboratively relaxing the threshold of trunk reservation and limiting holding time of general calls. This method is targeted at not only the telephone exchange but also various systems on networks, e.g. base stations of the wireless network or SIP servers. With our method, the threshold is configured in consideration of the ratio of traffic intensities estimated in advance. We modeled the telephone exchange as a queueing loss system and calculated call-blocking rates of both emergency and general calls by using computer simulation. The comparison with the conventional holding time limitation method showed that our proposed method accepts the required number of emergency calls by appropriately relaxing the threshold, while suppressing the increase in call-blocking of general calls.

We have proposed a quality of experience (QoE)-oriented wireless local area network (WLAN) to provide sufficient QoE to important application flows. Unlike ordinary IEEE 802.11 WLAN, the proposed QoE-oriented WLAN dynamically performs admission control with the aid of the prediction of a “loadable capacity” criterion. This paper proposes an algorithm for dynamic network reconfiguration by centralized control among multiple basic service sets (BSSs) of the QoE-oriented WLAN, in order to maximize the number of traffic flows whose QoE requirements can be satisfied. With the proposed dynamic reconfiguration mechanism, stations (STAs) can change access point (AP) to connect. The operating frequency channel of a BSS also can be changed. These controls are performed according to the current channel occupancy rate of each BSS and the required radio resources to satisfy the QoE requirement of the traffic flow that is not allowed to transmit its data by the admission control. The effectiveness of the proposed dynamic network reconfiguration is evaluated through indoor experiments with assuming two cases. One is a 14-node experiment with QoE-oriented WLAN only, and the other is a 50-node experiment where the ordinary IEEE 802.11 WLAN and the QoE-oriented WLAN coexist. The experiment confirms that the QoE-oriented WLAN can significantly increase the number of traffic flows that satisfy their QoE requirements, total utility of network, and QoE-satisfied throughput, which is the system throughput contributing to satisfy the QoE requirement of traffic flows. It is also revealed that the QoE-oriented WLAN can protect the traffic flows in the ordinary WLAN if the border of the loadable capacity is properly set even in the environment where the hidden terminal problem occurs.

We have proposed a novel call admission control (CAC) method for maximizing total user satisfaction in a heterogeneous traffic network and showed their effectiveness by using the optimal threshold from numerical analysis [1],[2]. With these CAC methods, it is assumed that only selfish users exist in a network. However, we need to consider the possibility that some cooperative users exist who would agree to reduce their requested bandwidth to improve another user's Quality of Service (QoS). Under this assumption, conventional CAC may not be optimal. If there are cooperative users in the network, we need control methods that encourage such user cooperation. However, such “encourage” control methods have not yet been proposed. Therefore, in this paper, we propose novel CAC methods for cooperative users by using queueing theory. Numerical analyses show their effectiveness. We also analyze the characteristics of the optimal control parameter of the threshold.

In this paper, we investigate how to achieve call admission control (CAC) for guaranteeing call dropping probability QoS which is caused by handoff timeout in cognitive radio (CR) networks. When primary user (PU) appears, spectrum handoff should be initiated to maintain secondary user (SU)'s link. We propose a novel virtual queuing (VQ) scheme to schedule spectrum handoff requests sent by multiple SUs. Unlike the conventional first-come-first-served (FCFS) scheduling, resuming transmission in the original channel has higher priority than switching to another channel. It costs less because it avoids the cost of signaling frequent spectrum switches. We characterize the handoff delay on the effect of PU's behavior and the number of SUs in CR networks. And user capacity under certain QoS requirement is derived as a guideline for CAC. The analytical results show that call dropping performance can be greatly improved by CAC when a large amount of SUs arrives fast as well as the VQ scheme is verified to reduce handoff cost compared to existing methods.

A mobile hotspot is a moving vehicle that hosts an Access Point (AP) such as train, bus and subway where users in these vehicles connect to external cellular network through AP to access their internet services. To meet Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, typically throughput and/or delay, a Call Admission Control (CAC) is needed to restrict the number of users accepted by the AP. In this paper, we analyze a modified guard channel scheme as CAC for mobile hotspot as follows: During a mobile hotspot is in the stop-state, we adopt a guard channel scheme where the optimal number of resource units is reserved for vertical handoff users from cellular network to WLAN. During a mobile hotspot is in the move-state, there are no handoff calls and so no resources for handoff calls are reserved in order to maximize the utility of the WLAN capacity. We model call's arrival and departure processes by Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP) and then we model our CAC by 2-dimensional continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) for single traffic and 3-dimensional CTMC for two types of traffic. We solve steady-state probabilities by the Quasi-Birth and Death (QBD) method and we get various performance measures such as the new call blocking probabilities, the handoff call dropping probabilities and the channel utilizations. We compare our CAC with the conventional guard channel scheme which the number of guard resources is fixed all the time regardless of states of the mobile hotspot. Finally, we find the optimal threshold value on the amount of resources to be reserved for the handoff call subject to a strict constraint on the handoff call dropping probability.

This paper focuses on learning the economic behaviour of the access point (AP) and users in wireless local area networks (WLANs), and using a game theoretic approach to analyze the interactions among them. Recent studies have shown that the AP would adopt a simple, yet optimal, fixed rate pricing strategy when the AP has an unlimited uplink bandwidth to the Internet and the channel capacity of WLAN is unlimited. However, the fixed rate strategy fails to be optimal if a more realistic model with limited capacity is considered. A substitute pricing scheme for access service provisioning is hence proposed. In particular, the AP first estimates the probable utility degradation of existing users consequent upon the admission of an incoming user. Second, the AP decides: (i) whether the incoming user should be accepted; and (ii) the price to be announced in order to try to maximize the overall revenue. The condition, under which the proposed scheme results in a perfect Bayesian equilibrium (PBE), is investigated.

With the fast development of mobile communication technologies, mobile multimedia services like mobile Video on Demand (VOD) are becoming prevalent. However, VOD streaming requires dedicated bandwidth to satisfy Quality of Service (QoS), and the limited wireless bandwidth will become insufficient to support the increasing number of mobile VOD users. In order to solve the problem, this paper proposes a Call Admission Control (CAC) approach which can accept new users even when the system bandwidth is insufficient. Our approach also guarantees continuous playback for subscribers by taking into account the service end time and the delay bound of the users. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can increase the number of concurrent users and reduce the connection blocking probability significantly without playback interruption.

In this paper, a new bandwidth allocation scheme is proposed based on the Mechanism Design (MD); MD is a branch of game theory that stimulates rational users to behave cooperatively for a global goal. The proposed scheme consists of bandwidth adaptation, call admission control and pricing computation algorithms to improve network performance. These algorithms are designed based on the adaptive online approach and work together to maximize bandwidth efficiency economically. A simulation shows that the proposed scheme can satisfy contradictory requirements and so provide well-balanced network performance.

In wireless single-hop networks, IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) is the standard for Quality of Service (QoS) control. However, it is necessary for controlling QoS to modify the currently used IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)-compliant terminals as well as Access Points (APs). In addition, it is necessary to modify the parameter of IEEE 802.11e EDCA when the traffic is heavy. This paper proposes a novel scheme to guarantee QoS of high-priority flow with Receiving Opportunity Control in MAC Frame (ROC) employed adaptive flow control in wireless multi-hop network. In the proposed scheme, the edge APs which are directly connected to user terminals estimate the network capacity, and calculate appropriate ACK prevention probability against low-priority flow according to traffic load. Simulation evaluation results show that the proposed scheme guarantees QoS.

We have proposed a novel call admission control (CAC) for maximizing total user satisfaction in a heterogeneous traffic network and showed the effectiveness of our CAC by using an optimal threshold from numerical analysis [1]. In our previous CAC, when a new broadband flow arrives and the total accommodated bandwidth is more than or equal to the threshold, the arriving new broadband flow is rejected. In actual networks, however, users may agree to wait for a certain period until the broadband flow, such as video, begins to play. In this paper, when total accommodated bandwidth is more than or equal to the threshold, arriving broadband flows wait instead of being rejected. As a result, we can greatly improve total user satisfaction.

In this paper a novel and effective two phase admission control (TPAC) for QoS mobile ad hoc networks is proposed that satisfies the real-time traffic requirements in mobile ad hoc networks. With a limited amount of extra overhead, TPAC can avoid network congestions by a simple and precise admission control which blocks most of the overloading flow-requests in the route discovery process. When compared with previous QoS routing schemes such as QoS-aware routing protocol and CACP protocols, it is shown from system simulations that the proposed scheme can increase the system throughput and reduce both the dropping rate and the end-to-end delay. Therefore, TPAC is surely an effective QoS-guarantee protocol to provide for real-time traffic.

Multimedia applications such as music or video streaming, video teleconferencing and IP telephony are flourishing in packet-switched networks. Applications that generate such real-time data can have very diverse quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In order to guarantee diverse QoS requirements, the combined use of a packet scheduling algorithm based on Generalized Processor Sharing (GPS) and leaky bucket traffic regulator is the most successful QoS mechanism. GPS can provide a minimum guaranteed service rate for each session and tight delay bounds for leaky bucket constrained sessions. However, the delay bounds for leaky bucket constrained sessions under GPS are unnecessarily large because each session is served according to its associated constant weight until the session buffer is empty. In order to solve this problem, a scheduling policy called Output Rate-Controlled Generalized Processor Sharing (ORC-GPS) was proposed in [17]. ORC-GPS is a rate-based scheduling like GPS, and controls the service rate in order to lower the delay bounds for leaky bucket constrained sessions. In this paper, we propose a call admission control (CAC) algorithm for ORC-GPS, for leaky-bucket constrained sessions with deterministic delay requirements. This CAC algorithm for ORC-GPS determines the optimal values of parameters of ORC-GPS from the deterministic delay requirements of the sessions. In numerical experiments, we compare the CAC algorithm for ORC-GPS with one for GPS in terms of schedulable region and computational complexity.

In this paper, we present a distributed and interactive admission and power control protocol for spectrum underlay environments. The protocol enables distributed primary users (PUs) to estimate and adjust the level of tolerable interference as their transmitting powers evolve to a given signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) target. The protocol also guides the powers of distributed secondary users (SUs) to achieve their own targets while restricting the transmitting powers from SUs so as not to interfere with the PUs. This restriction of interference from SUs to PUs is an essential part of cognitive radio networks (CRNs) and is facilitated by sending a warning tone from PUs to SUs in the proposed protocol. The SUs that have frequently received the warning tones turn off their transmitters and so autonomously drop from the system. This paper proves that, under the proposed interactive protocol, every PU finally achieves its target if it is originally feasible without SUs and the transmit powers of remaining SUs converge to a fixed point. The proposed method protects PUs perfectly in the sense that all the PUs reach their targets after power control. Numerical investigation shows how safely PUs are protected and how well SUs are admitted as a function of protocol parameters, the frequency of warning tones, the number of SUs to be admitted and the number of active PUs.

Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) has drawn immediate attention recently since it can opportunistically exploit any spectrum holes and thus improve bandwidth utilization. From the perspective of medium access control (MAC) design, the QoS requirement of SU is one of the design issues in DSA network. In this paper, we propose a new admission control scheme referred to as log-based dynamic spectrum access admission control (DSAC) aiming at (1) protection of the primary users and (2) QoS prioritization for the existing secondary users. The DSAC algorithm protects the PU by limiting SUs' access using PU's arrival log or statistics. Furthermore, the DSAC reserves a channel for previously admitted SU to reduce frequent service disruption of the SU. Reservation of channels is carried out without assuming any specific arrival process, and thus the DSAC would be practical for general user arrival patterns unlike the existing admission control techniques. Performance evaluation has shown that the proposed DSAC outperforms existing admission control schemes with respect to the PU blocking rate, SU communication stability, and SU aggregate throughput by about 13%, 26%, and 20%, respectively.

Admission control is a procedure to guarantee a given level of Quality of Service (QoS) by accepting or rejecting arrival connection requests. There are many studies on backlog or loss rate evaluation formulas for admission control at a single node. However, there are few studies on end-to-end evaluation formulas suitable for admission control. In a previous paper, the authors proposed a new stochastic network calculus for many flows using an approach taken from large deviations techniques and obtained asymptotic end-to-end evaluation formulas for output burstiness and backlog. In this paper, we apply this stochastic network calculus to a heterogeneous tandem network with many forwarding flows and cross traffic flows constrained by leaky buckets, and obtain a simple evaluation formula for the end-to-end backlog. In this formula, the end-to-end backlog can be evaluated by the traffic load at the bottle neck node. This result leads us to a natural extension of the evaluation formula for a single node.

Multimedia applications such as video and audio have recently come into much wider use. Because this heterogeneous traffic consumes most of the network's resources, call admission control (CAC) is required to maintain high-quality services. User satisfaction depends on CAC's success in accommodating application flows. Conventional CACs do not take into consideration user satisfaction because their main purpose is to improve the utilization of resources. Moreover, if we assume a service where an ISP provides a "flat-based charging," each user may receive same user satisfaction as a result of users being accommodated in a network, even if each has a different bandwidth. Therefore, we propose a novel CAC to maximize total user satisfaction based on a new philosophy where heterog eneous traffic is treated equally in networks. Theoretical analysis is used to derive optimal thresholds for various traffic configurations with a full search system. We also carried out theoretical numerical analysis to demonstrate the effectiveness of our new CAC. Moreover, we propose a sub-optimal threshold configuration obtained by using an approximation formula to develop practical CAC from these observations. We tested and confirmed that performance could be improved by using sub-optimal parameters.

We propose a call admission control scheme in cellular and wireless local area networks (WLANs) integration: integrated service-based admission control with load-balancing capability (ISACL). The novel aspects of the ISACL scheme include that load transfer in the cellular/WLAN overlapping areas is allowed for the admission of originating data calls from the area with cellular access only and vertical handoff requests to the cellular network. Packet-level quality of service (QoS) constraints in the WLANs and other-cell interference in the code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular network are taken into account to derive the WLANs and cellular capacity. We model the integrated networks using a multi-dimensional Markov chain and the important performance measures are derived for effective optimization of the admission parameters. The analytical model is validated by a computer simulation. The variation of admission parameters with traffic load and the dependence of resource utilization on admission parameters are investigated. It is shown that optimal balancing of the traffic load between the cellular network and WLANs results in the maximum resource utilization. Numerical results demonstrate that substantial performance improvements can be achieved by applying the proposed ISACL scheme.