QoS and radio resource management in multimedia packet transmission for 3G wireless IP networks

This article presents an overview of radio resource management schemes for support of multimedia applications in Packet CDMA-based systems, which are flexible to support traffic services with various QoS requirements. Packet transmission combined with Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) access technique defined in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) provides high flexibility in resource allocation. However, this flexibility requires to design effective resource management strategies (Power, Load control, Admission Control and Packet Scheduling, and Handover Control) able to control the number of active users in a system where capacity varies according with the level of interference. Traffic and demand characterization is needed in order to map QoS requirements in the application layer into appropriate parameters that can be controlled at the physical level by these radio resource strategies (spreading factors, power). The impact of mobility into the resource availability and into the user capacity demands needs to be considered at the same time as new methodologies for network design and resource dimensioning to make an efficient use of radio resources.