Channel allocation schemes

In radio resource management for wireless and cellular network, channel allocation schemes are required to allocate bandwidth and communication channels to base stations, access points and terminal equipment. The objective is to achieve maximum system spectral efficiency in bit/s/Hz/site by means of frequency reuse, but still assure a certain grade of service by avoiding co-channel interference and adjacent channel interference among nearby cells or networks that share the bandwidth. There are two types of strategies that are followed:-

1. Fixed: FCA, fixed channel allocation: Manually assigned by the network operator
2. Dynamic:
   1. DCA, dynamic channel allocation,
   2. DFS, dynamic frequency selection
   3. Spread spectrum

FCA

In Fixed Channel Allocation or Fixed Channel Assignment (FCA) each cell is given a predetermined set of frequency channels. FCA requires manual frequency planning, which is an arduous task in TDMA and FDMA based systems, since such systems are highly sensitive to co-channel interference from nearby cells that are reusing the same channel. Another drawback with TDMA and FDMA systems with FCA is that the number of channels in the cell remains constant irrespectively of the number of customers in that cell. This result in traffic congestion and some calls being lost when traffic gets heavy in some cells, and idle capacity in other cells.

If FCA is combined with conventional FDMA and perhaps or TDMA, a fixed number of voice channels can be transferred over the cell. A new call can only be connected by an unused channel. If all the channel are occupied than the new call is blocked in this system. There are however several dynamic radio-resource management schemes that can be combined with FCA. A simple form is traffic-adaptive handover threshold, implying that that calls fron cell phones situated in the overlap between two adjacent cells can be forced to make handover to the cell with lowest load for the moment. If FCA is combined with spread spectrum, the maximum number of channels is not fixed in theory, but in practice a maximum limit is applied, since too many calls would caus too high co-channel interference level, causing the quality to be problematic. Spread spectrum allows cell breathing to be applied, by allowing an overloaded cell to borrow capacity (maximum number of simultaneous calls in the cell) from a nearby cell that is sharing the same frequency.

FCA can be extended into a DCA system by using a borrowing strategy in which a cell can borrow channels from neighboring cell which is superviesd by Mobile Switching Center (MSC).

DCA and DFS

Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) may be applied in wireless networks with several adjacent non-centrally controlled access-points. The access-points automatically selects a frequency channel with low interference level. DFS is supported by the novel IEEE 802.11h wireless local area network standard. DFS is also mandated in the 5470-5725 MHz U-NII band for radar avoidance.

A more efficient way of channel allocation would be Dynamic Channel Allocation or Dynamic Channel Assignment(DCA) in which voice channel are not allocated to cell permanently, instead for every call request base station request channel from MSC. The channel is allocated following an algorithm which accounts likelihood of future blocking within the cell. It requires the MSC to collect real time data on channel occupancy, traffic distribution and Radio Signal Strength Indications(RSSI). DCA schemes are suggested for TDMA/FDMA based cellular systems such as GSM, but are currently not used in any products.^{[citation needed]} OFDMA systems, such as the downlink of 4G cellular systems, can be considered as carrying out DCA for each individeual sub-carrier as well as each timeslot.

DCA and DFS eliminate the tedious manual frequency planning work. DCA also handles bursty cell traffic and utilizes the cellular radio resources more efficiently. DCA allows the number of channels in a cell to vary with the traffic load, hence increasing channel capacity with little costs.

Spread spectrum

Spread spectrum can be considered as an alternative to complex DCA algorithms. Spread spectrum avoids cochannel interference between adjacent cells, since the probability that users in nearby cells use the same spreading code is insignificant. Thus the frequency channel allocation problem is relaxed in cellular networks based on a combination of Spread spectrum and FDMA, for example IS95 and 3G systems. Spread spectrum also facilitate that centrally controlled base stations dynamically borrow resources from each other depending on the traffic load, simply by increasing the maximum allowed number of simultaneous users in one cell (the maximum allowed interference level from the users in the cell), and decreasing it in an adjacent cell. Users in the overlap between the base station coverage area can be transferred between the cells (called cell-breathing), or the traffic can be regulated by admission control and traffic-shaping.

However, spread spectrum gives lower spectral efficiency than non-spread spectrum techniques, if the channel allocation in the latter case is optimized by a good DCA scheme. Especially OFDM modulation is an interesting alternative to spread spectrum because of its ability to combat multipath propagation for wideband channels without complex equalization. OFDM can be extended with OFDMA for uplink multiple access among users in the same cell. For avoidance of inter-cell interference, FDMA with DCA or DFS is once again of interest. One example of this concept is the above mentioned IEEE 802.11h standard. OFDM and OFDMA with DCA is often studied as an alternative for 4G wireless systems.

DCA on a packet-by-packet basis

In packet based data communication services, the communication is bursty and the traffic load rapidly changing. For high system spectrum efficiency, DCA should be performed on a packet-by-packet basis. Examples of algorithms for packet-by-packet DCA are Dynamic Packet Assignment (DPA), Dynamic Single Frequency Networks (DSFN) and Packet and resource plan scheduling (PARPS).

See also

• Cellular traffic
• Cognitive radio
• Dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA)
• OFDMA
• Radio resource management (RRM)
• System spectral efficiency
• Cellular Network