Resource Management in Next-Generation Cellular and Wireless Networks

The next generation wireless networks will combine high-speed mobile communications with the current Internet architecture to create novel ways to communicate, access information, transact business, and provide entertainment. The goal is to reduce the distinction between wireline and wireless networks, and provide any kind of service to any kind of user at any location. Unlike the bandwidth in a wired network, radio spectrum is a scarce resource. Thus, careful planning and management of the radio spectrum is required to maximize its value. The evolving need for supporting differentiated services for multimedia applications in the wireless network adds a new dimension to this complex problem. Thorough research needs to be conducted in the areas of network architectures, resource provisioning, link-layer and network-layer protocols, adaptive resource management, and high availability of network components to build the next-generation wireless networks. Towards this goal, this dissertation makes six key contributions. First, we provide a tutorial on the current technologies, building blocks, and design issues faced in the deployment of cellular and wireless networks. Second, we study resource provisioning in multi-tier cellular networks. We propose and analyze the performance of two call-admission control algorithms for multi-tier cellular networks with multiclass traffic, and analyze the optimal partitioning of channels between the tiers to provide the best network performance. Third, we investigate the problem of providing better Quality of Service (QoS) to wireless users via a novel algorithm which exploits