CAC-RD: an UMTS Call Admission Control

The third wireless network generation (3G) aims to provide fast Internet access with quality of service (QoS) guarantees, especially to multimedia applications. UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunication System) is a kind of 3G networks. To provide QoS, the network must use an efficient admission control mechanism. This mechanism needs to prioritize network access to critical classes of applications. This work proposes an UMTS admission control mechanism, called CAC-RD (Call Admission Control—based on Reservation and Diagnosis). It is based on network diagnosis and on channel reservation for handovers. These techniques are associated with new calls blocking when the network reaches utilization thresholds. CAC-RD is a tool that prioritises handovers and conversational applications. The main CAC-RD goals are the handovers blocking reduction and the acceptable performance levels guarantee. Simulation results show that the CAC-RD channel reservation and the diagnosis techniques associated with the intrinsic network signal power control effectively reduces blockings while guarantying performance levels. Due to computational resource limits, simulations cannot answer related to admission control in big networks with thousands of users. This work presents a method to extrapolate scientific questions like CAC’s behavior with thousands of users and many antennas. An artificial neural network approach for CAC-RD in UMTS 3G networks is presented as an extension of the work.