A prioritized handoff local-packing distributed dynamic channel allocation strategy for cellular networks

We present a strategy to prioritize handoff calls in wireless networks which employ dynamic channel allocation and cell-based distributed control for fast call accommodation. The strategy essentially embodies local-packing and guard channels, requiring each base station to determine the channel assignment and reservations from a table of channel usage patterns maintained locally. In particular, the base station is prohibited from assigning any reserved channel for new calls but allowed to share reserved channels for handoff calls if necessary. With the strategy in distributed environments, one raised issue of critical importance is the stability of updating tables and another is the efficiency of sharing reservations. It is found that the stability is guaranteed if the base station is constrained to reserve channels only when calls arrive or depart. Furthermore, by a proposed scheme restricting the conditions to update tables the required traffic load for table updates decreases substantially, which further makes the strategy feasible. The effectiveness of extending reservation-sharing for handoff calls in the proposed strategy is validated through simulations