Dynamic resource assignment using network flows in wireless data networks

The radio frequency spectrum, a scarce resource in mobile communications, has to be efficiently utilized with the objective of increasing the network capacity and minimizing the interference. A variety of channel assignment strategies have been developed to achieve these objectives. Not only the mobility of the wireless user but also different types of wireless multimedia services create uncertainty in demand and non-optimum use of radio resources. As the cell sizes get smaller, there is a greater need for efficient channel assignment algorithms which are desired to dynamically balance the load of the system by performing reassignments when needed. Static schemes are no longer desirable for small cell systems under heavy and non-uniform multi-rate traffic. We propose a dynamic multi-channel assignment algorithm where the assignment decision is assisted by the mobiles. Our algorithm is based on the concept of network flows, which provide us with the framework to uniformly handle all the events occurring in the system including possible degradation and improvement of the existing assignments. This model enables fast local computations and avoids global reconfiguration which prevent other algorithms being practical