MDP call control in variable capacity communication networks

Abstract

This paper defines a theoretical framework based on Markov Decision Processes (MDP) to deal with call control algorithms in links with variable capacity supporting multiple classes of service. The variable capacity problem, which arises in wireless network scenarios, is addressed by incorporating the link model into the MDP formulation and by introducing, beside the standard call admission policy, a call dropping policy. The proposed approach is capable of controlling class-level quality of service in terms of both blocking and dropping probabilities. The resulting MDP is scalable with respect to the number of link states in the link model.