Cooperative Decentralized Resource Allocation in Heterogeneous Wireless Access Medium

In this paper, radio resource allocation in a heterogeneous wireless access medium is investigated. Mobile terminals (MTs) are equipped with multiple radio interfaces and are assumed to have multi-homing capabilities. A novel algorithm, namely prediction based resource allocation algorithm, is proposed for the resource allocation. Unlike the existing solutions in literature, the proposed algorithm does not require a central resource manager to perform the radio resource allocation. The MT plays an active role in the resource allocation operation by requesting a bandwidth share from each available network based on the available resources at the network, such that the total allocated bandwidth from different networks satisfies the MT service requirement. The proposed algorithm is suitable for implementation in a dynamic environment with call arrivals and departures, and relies on network cooperation to perform the decentralized radio resource allocation in an efficient manner. Simulation results are presented to investigate the performance tradeoffs of the proposed algorithm.