A Predictive Bandwidth Reservation Scheme Using Mobile Positioning and Road Topology Information

In cellular networks, an important practical issue is how to limit the handoff dropping probability efficiently. One possible approach is to perform dynamic bandwidth reservation based on mobility predictions. With the rapid advances in mobile positioning technology, and the widespread availability of digital road maps previously designed for navigational devices, we propose a predictive bandwidth reservation scheme built upon these timely opportunities. In contrast to the common practice of utilizing only incoming handoff predictions at each cell to compute the reservations, our scheme is more efficient as it innovatively utilizes both incoming and outgoing handoff predictions; it can meet the same target handoff dropping probability by blocking fewer new calls. The individual base stations are responsible for the computations, which are shown to be simple enough to be performed in real-time. We evaluate the scheme via simulation, along with five other schemes for comparison. Simulation results show that those schemes that rely on positioning information are significantly more efficient than those that do not. Our scheme's additional use of the road topology information further improves upon this advantage, bringing the efficiency closer to the bound set by a benchmark scheme that assumes perfect knowledge about future handoffs