Wireless Networks Revenue Optimization through Overload Control with Priority Services

Wireless networks are currently experiencing more overload situations than their wireline counterparts because of explosive mobile traffic growth, unpredictable traffic behavior, service differentiated traffic shedding, etc. Even though extensive research work on network overload control in general is going on, the economic aspect of the overload problem has received very little attention. Managing the incoming traffic in a way that generates the maximum possible revenue under overload warrants special attention. In this paper, we study a realistic wireless switch overload model where message exchange and message discarding at multiple nodes are considered. We propose a distributed overload control framework considering different service types to obtain the optimal revenue while maintaining the switch’s capability to handle call attempts during overload situation. This is achieved by exchanging overload information among the nodes that can have a global view of the switch-wide overload situation and its impact on revenue, and hence can adjust their own traffic shedding to improve the revenue generation. Next, we extend the proposed framework to incorporate different call priorities and discuss the conditions for reaching the optimal revenue that ensures preferential treatment to the high priority service types.