A channel allocation scheme for both uniform and non-uniform traffic environment in cellular networks

We propose a channel allocation scheme called unified channel allocation (UCA) appropriate for both uniform and non-uniform traffic environment. The currently available channel allocation schemes such as fixed, dynamic and hybrid schemes are not suitable for all traffic conditions. The fixed channel allocation scheme does not perform well in non-uniform traffic environment and the dynamic scheme does not do well in uniform heavy traffic conditions. In real situations, however, the user traffic pattern changes with time and space. The UCA scheme adaptively changes its channel recommendation pattern for each cell to satisfy the current demand under all traffic conditions. We demonstrate through simulation that the proposed scheme, using the virtual channel set (VCS), performs better than the other schemes in all traffic conditions. Furthermore, the UCA scheme is a practical scheme, because it can be implemented without knowledge of the traffic fluctuations with time and space, since the underlying VCSs will adapt to traffic fluctuations.