Integrating distributed channel allocation and handoff management for cellular networks

The tremendous demands from social market are pushing the booming development of mobile communications faster than ever before, while the electromagnetic spectrum of frequencies allocated for this purpose remains limited. Since frequency spectrum is the most expensive resource in wireless networks, it is a challenge to support QoS using limited frequency spectrum. In the literature, two orthogonal approaches are used to address the bandwidth utilization issue and the QoS provision issue; that is, channel allocation schemes have been proposed to improve bandwidth efficiency, whereas handoff management schemes, based on bandwidth reservation, have been proposed to guarantee a low connection dropping rate. However, little effort has been taken to address both issues together. In this paper, we integrate distributed channel allocation and handoff management to provide QoS guarantees and efficiently utilize the bandwidth. First, we present a complete distributed channel allocation algorithm to reduce its call drop rate and channel acquisition delay. Second, we integrate the proposed distributed channel allocation algorithm with a handoff management scheme to provide QoS guarantees and efficiently utilize the bandwidth. Compared to previous schemes, our scheme can significantly improve the overall performance of the mobile networks.