Importance

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Abstract

In a method for admitting new connections based on measured quantities in a wireless communications network having a base station and remote hosts, the base station measures and computes performance metrics to determine whether admission of the new connection could cause a failure to meet the Quality of Service (QoS) promised to already admitted connections. Only if the QoS can be maintained is the new connection is admitted. In one embodiment, the base station may optionally disconnect one or more already admitted lower priority connections if doing so will allow a higher priority new connection to be admitted without loss of QoS to the remaining already admitted connections. In one embodiment, each connection request specifies the average bit rate required and a traffic burstiness factor, the base station measures the number of bytes sent by each connection for a certain period of time and a burstiness factor for the traffic in either direction. The base station computes an equivalent number of admitted connections and determines whether the new equivalent number of admitted connections, after admission of the new connection, would exceed a threshold. The measured quantities can be various metrics related to interference. In one embodiment, uplink Frame Error Rate (FER), an average uplink bit rate, a burstiness factor of the uplink trafc, and a packet loss rate are measured at the base station. Downlink FER is similarly measured at each already admitted remote host and is sent to the base station. Alternatively, the average downlink bit rate, burstiness factor of downlink traffic, and packet loss rate may also be sent from each remote host to the base station. Considering the effect of the average rate and packet loss rate requested by a new connection and the computed equivalent bandwidth, the base station decides whether to admit the new connection based on whether the QoS of all admitted connections can be maintained.

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First Claim