We consider the design of efficient channel allocation algorithms in personal communication networks (PCN) where the cells have varying traffic loads. A common communication channel is to be dynamically shared between the cells. We propose a distributed intercell channel allocation policy that is easy to implement through the use of simple signaling between neighboring cells. For cells arranged in a line, we show that the proposed policy achieves maximum throughput. The same is true when the cells are arranged in a circle and the frequency reuse distance is 2, while for larger reuse distances and planar hexagonal arrays, the policy may not always achieve maximal throughput. For general circular arrays, we enhance the policy to achieve maximal throughput asymptotically as the number of cells increases. For planar hexagonal arrays, we show that the policy can guarantee throughputs which are fairly close to maximal.

Unlike wired networks, packets transmitted on wireless channels are often subject to burst errors which cause back to back packet losses. Most wireless LAN link layer protocols recover from packet losses by retransmitting lost segments. When the wireless channel is in a burst error state, most retransmission attempts fail thereby causing poor utilization of the wireless channel. Furthermore, in the event of multiple sessions sharing a wireless link, FIFO packet scheduling can cause the HOL blocking effect, resulting in unfair sharing of the bandwidth. This observation leads to a new class of packet dispatching methods which explicitly take the wireless channel characteristics into consideration in making packet dispatching decisions. We compare a variety of channel state dependent packet (CSDP) scheduling methods with a view towards enhancing the performance of the transport layer sessions. Our results indicate that by employing a CSDP scheduler at the wireless LAN device driver level, significant improvement in the channel utilization can be achieved in typical wireless LAN configurations.

Considers the design of efficient channel allocation algorithms in personal communication networks where the cells have varying traffic loads. A common communication channel is to be dynamically shared between the cells. The authors propose a distributed inter-cell channel allocation policy that is easy to implement through the use of simple signalling between neighboring cells. For cells arranged in a line they show that the proposed policy achieves maximum throughput. The same is true when the cells are arranged in a circle and the channel can be reused in every other cell. For larger reuse distances and planar hexagonal arrays, the policy may not always achieve maximal throughput. For these cases the authors provide regions of achievable cell throughputs under the proposed policy and show that they are tight in certain cases.