Utility-based Adaptive Bandwidth Allocation for Multi-Class Traffic in Wireless Networks

Adaptive bandwidth allocation is becoming more attractive in wireless communications since it can dynamically upgrade or degrade the allocated bandwidth of ongoing calls to cope with the network resource fluctuation. In this paper, we propose a utility-based adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme for multi-class traffic in wireless networks. Our scheme allocates bandwidth to ongoing calls according to their utility functions so that the total achieved utility of each individual cell is maximized. Since the bandwidth allocation should be performed in real-time to support the highly-varying resource availability, our algorithm has been designed with low computational complexity. Simulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. Results show that our adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme is effective in both achieving maximum cell utility and reducing the call blocking probability and call dropping probability of wireless networks.