An Analysis of the Effects of Mobility on Bandwidth Allocation Strategies in Multi-Class Cellular Wireless Networks

In this paper we present a multi-cell analytic model for multi-class cellular networks. We investigate the effects subscriber mobility has on bandwidth control strategies when the network supports multiple classes of subscribers having different bandwidth requirements. We introduce control strategies from non-mobile networks and examine them in a mobile environment. The expressions for call blocking using these control strategies have product form solutions. This allows us to develop a multi-cell, multi-class, model by generalizing on the Erlang fixed point approximation using generalized multi-rate, multi-class, Erlang loss formulas for each class of traffic. We produce expressions for originating calls lost, hand-off calls lost, forced-termination, and mean channel occupancy for each class of traffic in each cell for different control strategies. The multicell analytic model allows us to investigate the effects of asymmetric loads and mobility patterns in the network. The analytic results are supported by simulation. Keywords— Cellular networks, multi-class, mobility, bandwidth sharing