Distributed dynamic channel allocation with handoff priority in cellular communication networks

We introduce a strategy to prioritize handoff service in wireless networks employing dynamic channel allocation and cell-based distributed control for fast call accommodation. This strategy is able to effectively yield low handoff-failure probabilities, achieved through using local-packing, guard-channel-reservation, and reservation-sharing techniques to serve handoff requests. It essentially requires each base station to determine channel assignment and reservations from a table of channel usage patterns maintained locally. For distributed operations, critical issues are the stability and the loading of transmitting table-update messages over a network of wireline overlay as well as the efficiency of trunking reservations. It is found that the stability can be guaranteed if cells are constrained to reserve channels only when calls arrive or depart, and that the loading of table-update traffic can be reduced substantially by restricting conditions to update tables, which further makes the strategy feasible. In particular, handoff calls will benefit from trunking reservations the most when cells under certain conditions refrain from releasing reservations. These effects are validated through simulations.