Dynamic multiple-frame bandwidth provisioning with fairness and revenue considerations for Broadband Wireless Access Systems

The increasing demand for wireless heterogeneous multimedia services presents a real challenge to mobile network operators. Even with the substantial increase in the supported bandwidth in emerging Broadband Wireless Access Systems (BWASs) such as 3.5G High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), satisfying the bandwidth requirements of mobile users while increasing the revenues of network operators is still one of the major issues in these systems. Therefore, bandwidth provisioning will certainly play a decisive role in the success of such BWASs. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic multiple-frame bandwidth provisioning scheme for BWASs. The proposed scheme spans multiple time frames and optimally allocates them to the different classes of traffic depending on their weights, the real-time bandwidth requirements of their users' connections, their channel quality conditions and the expected obtained revenues. To maximize fairness and still maintain service differentiation between classes, we provide a unique formulation for dynamically computing the class weights. Simulation results are provided to show the potential and effectiveness of our scheme. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.