Performance evaluation of a virtual queuing - channel allocation scheme for microcellular networks

This paper deals with the performance evaluation of a novel distributed channel allocation scheme that attains a high resource reuse in cellular networks. A suitable interference model has been envisaged. Resources are nominally assigned to cells with Fixed Channel Allocation (FCA), according to a given reuse distance. Whenever a channel demand from a mobile user does not find a free nominal resource in a cell, a channel is temporarily borrowed violating the reuse distance constraint, provided that the co-channel interference level is acceptable. As soon as a nominal channel becomes available in this cell, the borrowed resource is released (virtual queuing). The performance of the proposed channel allocation scheme has been evaluated considering both uniform and non-uniform traffic patterns. A performance analysis approach has been also developed and validated by simulations. Comparisons with the classical FCA scheme and other dynamic and borrowing channel allocation strategies have permitted to highlight the good performance of the proposed technique.