Performance of channel assignment strategies in cellular systems

A new algorithm for channel assignment in cellular radio communications is proposed. The algorithm uses flexible fixed channel assignment that enables heavily loaded cells having all their nominal channels busy to borrow channels from other lightly loaded cells within the cluster provided they meet the reuse constraints. The cell in the cluster that has the least number of channels in use at that instant is allocated the highest priority to lend a channel. To minimize the traffic carried on borrowed channels we use different call switching strategies at the time of call departure. The main idea is to first return a channel borrowed from a cell that has the least number of nominal channels available to use at the instance of call departure. Simulation study of the algorithm is carried out. The results show that the proposed priority-based channel borrowing algorithm performs well under both uniform and non-uniform traffic distributions.