Call admission control vs. bandwidth reservation: reducing handoff call dropping rate and providing bandwidth efficiency in mobile networks

In mobile (wireless) networks, one major concern about quality of service (QoS) is call dropping, where a handoff call is dropped due to insufficient wireless resources. Previous research on this issue suggested to reserve a certain amount of bandwidth for handoff calls. While such reservation schemes can reduce call dropping rate, it is at the cost of low bandwidth efficiency. In this paper we propose a new approach that combines dynamic channel allocation and call admission control for bandwidth management. Simulation studies show that the proposed approach is capable of keeping the call dropping rate below a prespecified value while improving bandwidth utilization by 20% to 30%.