Designing multimedia call management algorithms in UMTS multi-tier environment with soft-handoff procedure

Many recent researches have been conducted on the topic of multimedia applications management in integrated terrestrial-satellite systems with W-CDMA air interfaces. Among the many research issues, the design of suitable radio resource management techniques for soft-QoS guarantees to the user applications surely deserves a particular attention. This paper tries to contribute to this issue by reporting the lessons learned during a performance assessment study on a multi-tier UMTS system simulation platform. It shows that the achievement of good performance is strongly related to the right choice of call management algorithms, which take into account both the nature of the delivered traffic at each coverage level and the effects of the presence of the soft-handoff.