Performance evaluation of variable reservation policies for hand-off prioritization in mobile networks

We propose a variable reservation scheme for cellular networks, based on prioritization of hand-off calls over new calls. This problem has been extensively studied in the literature, and several schemes consisting of call-request queuing, fixed reservation of channels or combinations of both have been proposed. We take advantage of the information reported by the mobile terminal to adaptively establish the number of channels to be reserved in the target cell. The effect of progressive channel degradation in the overlapping zone between cells is also taken into account. Performance evaluation is done using infinite two-dimensional Markov chains. A noticeable improvement in blocking and call-dropping probabilities is achieved using this new mechanism.