A two-level resource management scheme in wireless networks based on user-satisfaction

The success of future generation wireless data services will depend on the parameterized provisioning of quality of service (QoS) for applications whose demands and nature are highly heterogeneous. Also, user satisfaction will play a key role in the economic viability of wireless service deployments. In this paper, we present a QoS framework based on the paradigm of traffic class and user satisfaction. We address the problem of dealing with subjectiveness of user satisfaction or expectation from service providers by defining what we call user irritation factors, using Sigmoid functions. These factors reflect users' sensitivity and tolerance to delay. The proposed class-based QoS framework comprises a radio resource management scheme which considers user satisfaction based on the perceived QoS, and caters to heterogeneous applications that have diverse QoS requirements. Our resource management scheme has two components: the admission control algorithm caters to the long term user satisfaction while the session-based rate and bandwidth allocation scheme manipulates the short term user satisfaction. Soft-reservation schemes are also proposed to cater to the higher paying users. Performance metrics have been specifically defined for each traffic class. Extensive simulations using four types of traffic and three classes of users reveal that the proposed framework offers improved QoS without compromising the utilization of the system.