Resource allocation strategies for multimedia services in cellular networks

Abstract

The ever increasing demand for high bandwidth, low latency multimedia applications on mobile devices is set to pose an enormous challenge on the bandwidth allocation and multiplexing mechanisms in Long Term Evolution (LTE) and future wireless networks. In order to face this challenge, these cellular network infrastructures must be empowered with sophisticated but low overhead online radio resource allocation mechanisms to efficiently serve a variety of heterogeneous user equipments (mobile phones, laptops, tablets etc.) such that the Quality of Service (QoS)/Quality of Experience (QoE) demands of all flows/end-users are met. In addition to satisfying QoS/QoE, the resource scheduling mechanisms may also need to simultaneously cater to other practical constraints/objectives like limited power budget, maximizing spectral efficiency and graceful degradation in times of overload, in the face of ever changing network dynamics, user mobility etc. In this dissertation, we present a few novel scheduling methodologies for system level as well as client centric QoS/QoE management corresponding to multimedia streaming over cellular networks in general, and LTE based systems in particular.