A Service-oriented Self-adaptive CCE (S2-CCE) configuration mechanism to enhance time-sensitive mHealth applications

In Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) networks, the quasi-static configuration of Control Channel Element (CCE) creates multiple challenges to real-time mobile health (mHealth) applications. To handle these challenges, we propose a novel solution, Service-oriented Self-adaptive CCE (S2-CCE) configuration mechanism. This proposal can dynamically configure the just-enough number of CCEs for mHealth users according to their scenarios, which can avoid the over-utilization of the limited CCE resources. Furthermore, this self-adaptive CCE configuration is also self-aware to service quality from an mHealth user, which can solve the time-sensitive concern in mHealth applications, for example, emergency call and Consultation Video for the point of care. Consequently, we conceive an algorithm to implement the S2-CCE mechanism, in which the initial CCE configuration is based on the Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) reported by an mHealth user from a real deployment, and then this initialized CCE configuration can be intelligently adjusted according to QoS (Quality of Service) requirements from the mHealth user by introducing a concept of Service-Aware Degree (SAD). Our LTE-A system-level simulation experiments demonstrate that the S2-CCE can reduce average delay remarkably for mHealth applications (including HL7, DICOM mHealth users achieving 50% lower delay in contrast with non-service-aware method when there are 50 mHealth users in the cell). And it achieves high user satisfaction (almost 100%) in multi-user scenarios given a milder relaxation to user fairness.