Using packet-level information in handover and admission control schemes for wireless packet network

The algorithm which selects the best candidate base station to connect to is a key component in handover and admission control schemes for wireless cellular networks. This paper shows that, in wireless packet networks based on dynamic channel slot assignment, this algorithm can exploit additional packet-level information. The idea is that connections consume a different amount of resources even if they have the same nominal rate. In fact, corrupted packets can be retransmitted, and the retransmission overhead reflects the time varying channel quality perceived by each connection. We propose two novel load balancing metrics that effectively account for the uneven “weight” of each connection in terms of its up-to-date resource consumption. The performance of the proposed metrics are then evaluated for a particular (i.e. static) scenario. Although supplementary investigation is required in dynamic scenarios, our preliminary results provide new insights in the field of handover and admission control, and appear to open a new promising research area