Context-aware resource allocation for cellular wireless networks

Current cellular networks are often overloaded by Smartphone traffic, while the users' Quality of Service (QoS) demands are not met. To cope with this problem, we demonstrate a new radio resource management approach. With Context-Aware Resource Allocation, the base station's scheduler (i) observes Context Information (CI) from the user's environment and (ii) utilizes this knowledge for an efficient throughput-delay tradeoff. After introducing our framework for accessing CI from the handheld's applications and operating system, we use time-utility functions to develop a practical scheduling algorithm. Studying this heuristic under various traffic assumptions shows that our context-aware scheduler can support three times the load of proportional fair scheduling, at equal capacity and utility. Thus, even a small degree of CI increases the wireless links' efficiency without sacrificing the users' QoS.