Utility-based Resource Allocation for Soft QoS Traffic in Wireless Networks

In this paper, we study utility-based resource allocation for soft QoS traffic in wireless networks. We describe the design guidelines for this problem and propose a sub-optimal, polynomial time solution for such allocation. The proposed mechanism accounts for the traffic type, the total available resource, and the user channel quality, rather than solely depending on channel quality or traffic type as assumed in most existing work. The performance of the proposed mechanism is evaluated via simulations. The results show that this mechanism adapts to different traffic types. Specifically, it acts like a hard QoS system and allocates resource in a fairness-oriented manner when the utility function is very steep; on the other hand, when the utility function is relatively flat, this mechanism behaves like a best effort system and allocates resource in a throughput-oriented way.