A joint allocation, assignment and admission control (AAA) framework for next generation networks

In this paper, we propose a framework for performing allocation, assignment and admission control (AAA) in next generation cellular networks. A novel heuristic method for resource allocation is proposed. The allocation is done in a semi-distributed manner consisting of central allocation and local allocation. The role of the assignment module is to estimate the amount of resources needed by a user in order to satisfy the quality of service (QoS) requirements of the application. To that end, a Markov based approach which calculates the dropping probability of packets by considering the effects of queuing in the medium access control layer and the adaptive modulation and coding in the physical layer is presented. In order to estimate the required resources, the predicted throughput and delay are calculated based on the dropping probability and the predicted values are mapped to the required ones. The admission control module is responsible for admitting or rejecting a new or handoff user and is based on a mean resource calculation. The calculation takes into account the mean number of resources used by existing users as well as the buffer conditions of the individual users. By combining the three novel contributions on AAA into the AAA framework the overall network as well as the cell-edge throughput have been improved and the number of admitted users have been increased while still guaranteeing QoS for new users as well as existing users.