QoS-aware call admission control in wideband CDMA wireless networks

Efficient call admission control (CAC) technique plays a major role in ensuring the quality of service (QoS) requirements of different traffic classes and achieving flexible radio resource utilization in wideband CDMA system like universal mobile telecommunication system (UMTS). In this paper, we propose a novel QoS-aware CAC framework for radio access in wideband wireless UMTS networks. It features an efficient CAC algorithm coupled with a QoS class-separation mechanism based on the transmitted power of each individual mobile terminal. Three inter-relating components have been introduced to extend a currently existing UMTS uplink admission control scheme. First, we introduce a measurement-based component to calculate the current load of the system; second, this measurement-based component is integrated with a power prediction module to estimate the load increment that the new call will bring into the system; and third, the proposed framework feeds the results obtained to a CAC algorithm with a QoS-enforcing mechanism that gives each class of traffic different treatment based on the QoS requirement of the connections. To the best of our knowledge, ours is a first attempt towards combining the above components into one uplink CAC framework that aims to enhance system performance and to achieve per-class QoS objectives. Simulation results show the major impact on the performance of UMTS which is reflected in increased throughput and lower blocking and dropping. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.