Load sharing protocols for radio-level resilience

The survivability or resilience of a network refers to network performance during abnormal operating modes. Network design for survivability is usually constrained by cost. For mobile networks an overriding constraint is the limit placed on radio-level capacity by a regulated frequency spectrum. We propose a load-sharing cell-site architecture and a novel load-based channel allocation scheme which increases radio-level resilience by providing backup radio paths. Our simulations illustrate that our scheme does not reduce system capacity during normal operating modes and results in superior system performance by adapting to spatial and temporal fluctuations in user demand occurring during degraded or failed modes. We compare our results to two reference schemes: fixed channel allocation for a non-overlapping architecture and directed retry for the proposed load-sharing architecture.