Utility-Based Optimisation Of Resource Allocation For Wireless Networks

With the rapid development of communication technology in the world, network access technologies are being steadily improved, and the ubiquitous, heterogeneous network environment is appeared. The user requirements are more and more diversified and the high speed services are emerging in an endless stream. In the future, service will show a variety of features, such as ubiquity, heterogeneity, diversity, intellectualization and individuation, etc. It is very important to focus on user-centric demand, and enhance the user experience of service. Due to the limit of total resources in the networks, how to allocate resources to the users in reasonable manner has become the hot topic in the research of network resource allocation. Most importantly, the resource allocation mechanism must support heterogeneous services with different QoS (Quality of Service) requirements, and improve system utility as well as operator’s revenue.In this thesis, the dynamic unified utility function for users is investigated at first according to utility theory. Then the resource allocation in single-path network and the multi-path networks have been mainly investigated, respectively. And the network utility maximization models are also presented. The author’s main research work and contributions are composed of several aspects as follows:Firstly, the unified utility function with different traffics is studied based on the user behaviors, user preferences, and the wireless network factors. The interactive scheme between user and network is also investigated. In addition, the network utility maximization models are presented, and the fairness about the resource allocation is also analyzed.Secondly, in order to improve the performance of the whole wireless network and social welfare, the limited network resources should be allocated efficiently and fairly. Aim at the single-path network, a joint guaranteed resource allocation scheme is proposed, which firstly introduces the required bandwidth and the desired bandwidth, and then combines the utility model with services that have different QoS (Quality of Service) requirements. An optimized model is built and the corresponding resource allocation scheme is proposed. The scheme could guarantee different QoS requirements, while the utility of the system could be improved. Furthermore, it can realize the fairness allocation between QoS and BE (Best Effort, BE) traffics. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can effectively improve the system utility compared with the traditional method, meanwhile, the goal of service oriented allocation is achieved, and the performance of the whole system is optimized. Thirdly, resource allocation is also investigated in multi-path network. Considering in recent years, more research work focused on the path management for the multi-path networks, and the system utility and operator’s revenue were discussed rarely. The key issues in multi-path networks are analyzed based on the development of multi-path transmission technology, In this thesis, a multi-path network utility maximization model called CMT-NUM is presented. The CMT-NUM model is analyzed from an economic point of view, and an algorithm is proposed based on the theory of marginal utility. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively solve the resource allocation problem of multipath network. Moreover, it can maximize the system utility while satisfying the QoS requirement of the services. In addition, the relationship between system utility and operator’s revenue are discussed in detail. And then, some references about pricing and resource allocation method for the operators are proposed.