A zone-based bandwidth reservation scheme for UMTS

For QoS reasons it is advisable for cellular operators to give higher priority to already ongoing connections than new call attempts. This can be achieved by having bandwidth in each cell exclusively reserved for these calls. Herein, a method for dynamically determining the size of the reserved bandwidth in UMTS networks, called the zone-based reservation scheme (ZRS), is introduced. For this purpose, ZRS applies advanced subscriber movement predictions. The prediction accuracy is improved by grouping the calls according to previous movement patterns and speed, where data are collected separately for each group. To handle the soft capacity property of UMTS, ZRS considers both intra- and intercellular movements. This is achieved by dividing the cell areas into zones and tracking every cell zone ID alteration for all ongoing calls. ZRS can be implemented together with most call admission control schemes.