Multi-channel packet resource allocation for multimedia support

In a wireless packet network that supports an integrated mix of multimedia traffic, a large variety of mobiles with different service rates will need to be accommodated efficiently in an unified bandwidth-on-demand manner. We have proposed a robust resource allocation protocol to utilize the multiple parallel packet channels to support mixes of multirate traffic. The protocol incorporates a spectrally efficient accessing scheme and across-cell resource sharing technique to effectively multiplex multi-rate packet transmission. The protocol simplifies the network setup and system operation and at the same time reduce the system call blocking and dropping probabilities for all different rate classes of mobiles and has very high channel utilization efficiency. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of the protocol when the channel is subject to Rayleigh fading. We study a scenario when the mobile is downloading a number of media objects and compare the delay performance with the single packet channel. Analytical results indicate that the performance of the protocol is highly dependent on the Doppler frequency and the fading margin and significant gain in the system performance can be achieved for a given set of channel conditions and Doppler frequencies.