Design and analysis of optimal resource allocation policies in wireless networks

Abstract

This thesis studies the design of optimal resource allocation policies for data services in wireless networks. In particular, this thesis investigates the following resource management issues: power allocation, transmission control and rate allocation. We first study these issues separately from a single user point of view and then jointly from a systematic viewpoint. A set of problems is modelled from the stochastic decision theoretic framework and solved by using the Markov decision processes (MDP) mathematical tool. Different optimal policies have been determined to achieve a best balance point of different QoS requirements and their properties are analyzed. When allocating resource among multiple users, fairness among users is also important in addition to system utilization efficiency. We propose a new fairness model, the fair-effort resource sharing model, and a simple credit based algorithm to implement the proposed fairness model. According to our fairness model, the resource share (quota) allocated to a user is proportional to the user's effort which is considered as time dependent rather than as fixed. For all problems, extensive simulations are performed and results support our points.