Proceedings of International Conference on Electrical Infonnation and Communication Technology (EICT 20 I 5)

Opportunistic System Approach for Capacity

Enhancement and Congestion Mitigation in Advanced
Wireless Networks
Kazi N awshad Azam and Mostafa Zaman Chowdhury

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering

E-mail: nawshadJruet@yahoo.com.mzceee@yahoo.com

Abstract-Today's technology in communicating among wireless

systems are more complicated and sophisticated with more
opportunities, services and facilities to its users. As wireless
network technology advances so as the challenges associated with
it increases to solve some basic problems such as congestion,
interference, call admission and service quality control etc. In the
macro integrated femtocellular or heterogeneous wireless
network the system capacity enhancement in a low congestion
environment is a key issue to focus on and to do so a novel
approach is proposed in this paper. We propose an opportunistic
system approach where intelligent resource reallocation (IRR)
scheme is used to create opportunity to its user to be connected in
the high capacity advanced wireless network system with reduced
congestion. Performance analysis of our proposed scheme shows
how capacity and congestion of wireless network are correlated
to provide a reliable wireless system.

Keywords- Opportunistic system, congestion, system capacity,

interference, intelligent resource reallocation.

I.

INTR ODUCTION

Complex wireless technology is today's demand for high

traffic in communication channel [1], [2]. There are different
ways of resource allocation to provide better reliable network
coverage to serve user's demand. In existing technology
capacity of a particular communication channel is predefined
that is fixed. For this predefined channel capacity user per
channel is also fixed. This channel condition makes the system
performance poor. System performance poor means low signal
strength, high signal-to- noise plus interference ratio (SNIR),
high congestion, low throughput, low quality of service for
user [3]. These problems origins from different part of the
system design considerations such as power control scheme,
frequency allocation scheme, and interference mitigation
technique etc [4]. All these problems can be reduced in a
considerable limit by applying proper intelligent techniques.
Cognitive or opportunistic radio system is a way where
cognitive user can use dedicated channel in different way but
not in the presence of dedicated user in that channel [5].
When interference is low, SNIR is high and hence
increased system capacity [6]. Again when number of user is
high in a system then interference may increase which in turn
create possibility of reducing system capacity. Also when
power control and frequency planning are not adequate in the

978-1-4673-9257-0/15/$3\.00 2015 IEEE

341

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Technology, Bangladesh

system then it causes high interference effect [7]. Improper

frequency allocations also make wastage of valuable resource.
So, user suffers from congestion problem in busy areas. This
congestion problem causes higher rate of call drops. To reduce
call drop problem call admission control is required.
In this paper we focus on reducing congestion problem and
also making system capacity dynamic of wireless network by
applying intelligent resource reallocation ORR) scheme where
system capacity can be increased in some extent to support
extra users according to existing user's resource utilization
natures. New frequency allocation is proposed to make
dynamic system capacity for both macrocell and femtocell
wireless networks which is shown in Fig. l. They are: (a)
available frequency; dedicated frequency use and opportunistic
frequency use (left portion of Fig. 1), and (b) reserved
frequency; macrocell frequency share and femtocell frequency
share (right portion of Fig. 1). To make user equipment (UE)
compatible with proposed opportunistic system as shown in
Fig. 2(a), existing UE should have extra mode sensing and
switching mechanisms installed inside it. So, user equipments
(UEs) for both macrocell and femtocell are proposed to be
reconfigurable capability such as to use the above mentioned
proposed frequency allocation schemes as: full mode resource
utilization and reserve mode resource utilization states,
respectively as shown in Fig. 2(b) [8]. Some other measurable
parameters such as user's mobility/speed threshold, signal
strength threshold, and decision threshold are also considered
for our analysis. Here, the author's contribution is in the
proposed IRR scheme, where system supports extra
opportunistic user in a dedicated channel which is not fully
occupied by its dedicated users at the same time seamlessly.
Rest of this paper is organized as follows: section II provides
our proposed opportunistic system approach; system modeling
is given in section III, section IV presents the numerical results,
and finally conclusions are drawn in the last section.
II.

A.

PR OPOSED QpPOTUNISTIC SYSTEM ApPROACH

Opportunity Creation in Proposed IRR Scheme

Proper resource utilization should be guaranteed in order to

confirm reliable wireless communication with low cost by
providing different intelligent ways which is tenned as
opportunity creation. Here, we provide IRR scheme which is

an opportunity creative scheme by which overall system

capacity of advanced heterogeneous wireless network can be
increased along with reduced congestion problem. Congestion
problem occurs when available system resource is smaller than
demanded by users. For instance, let us consider a wireless
system where macrocell and femtocell coexists to form
advanced wireless network as shown in Fig. 3. From Fig. 3 we
can see that, a channel k is allocated to j dedicated user group
(UGdj) where j 1, 2, . . . ,J and I < J in different time slot
number, Nts uniformly without prior knowledge about user's
actual resource demand as shown in Fig. 2(a) or actual required
resource utilization as shown in Fig. 2(b). Now resource
utilization occurs by different users according to their type of
activities and in this case activities are not same for all users
which mean different activities for each user. For this reason
with existing fixed resource allocation scheme capacity of
wireless network is fixed as shown in Fig. 3. With this fixed
capacity of existing system users experiences more congestion
problem as shown in Fig. 4, along with high rate of call drop,
increased intra- and/or inter-system handover problem. To
avoid these problems we proposed IRR scheme among
heterogeneous system for users by considering different
preliminaries and measurement of different system parameters
as shown in Fig. 5.

such as hypotheses H 01,k is given to first time slot (UGd1), fourth

time slot (UGd4) and last time slot (UGdJ) user group over
channel k and k

1, 2, . . . ,K . The hypothesis H 01,k is indicating

that among these three dedicated users group each user's

resource utilization state is up to lower threshold limit ('Ytowk ).
These lower limits is less than 50% of maximum capacity of
serving channel k where we can easily create opportunity for
new cognitive or opportunistic user groups (UGcj) where
j
1, 2, . . . ,J and I < J at different time slots number, Nts such
as UGcl, UGc4 and UGcJ. Then UGdl, UGd4, and UGdJ and
UGclo UGc4, and UGcJ user groups get new hypothesis notation
from system as hypothesis Hl l.kNd (fully utilized channel by
=

UGdj) and hypothesis Hoo.kHc (empty channel available for UGcj),

Resource block number, Roo

Figure I. Allocated resource status in a channel for poposed IRR scheme in

existing advanced heterogeneous wireless network.
HOO,k

D
<1.1

Capacity Enhancement and Congestion Reduction

The capacity of a wireless system should be adequate to

support extra users without overloading channel, increasing
interference level, and higher call drop problems. Call drop rate
increases with high rate of user's resource utilization in a fixed
or limited capacity wireless system and also which causes high
congestion problem. Fig. 6 depicts an intelligent way of
resource reallocation technique to make a system with limited
capacity into a dynamic capacity. Figure 6 shows that how the
capacity of a particular channel in advanced macro integrated
femtocellular or heterogeneous wireless network changes from
fixed capacity to variable capacity according to user's activity
such as actual resource demand and utilization. The natures of
activities of different users are different located at the same
geographic region that is under the same (only femtocell or
macrocell network) or different network (heterogeneous
network) which is serving them. We can also see that each
channel is reallocated at different time slots and different
hypothesis are allocated for each utilization time slot for UGdj

D System's resource blocks for available mode

B.

Available femlocell

Available macrocell

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5

Time slot number, Nh;

Initial dedicated resource allocation in resource available mode

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,

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...

...

...

...

...

.1;

c:J
c::J

Tr e slot number, Nts

Resource utilization of channel numbe

Unused resouce of channel number k
(h)

Figure 2. Allocated (a) resource status and (b) resource actual utilization
status in a channel for existing advanced heterogeneous wireless network.

respectively. From hypothesis HOOkHc

'

system can allow new

opportunistic user to be served and hence capacity is

increased. This process is done for each hypothesis
except H1LkN Therefore, by comparing between two types of
capacity such as without IRR that is fixed system capacity and
with IRR that is dynamic system capacity, it is obvious that
with proposed IRR scheme the dynamic system capacity
serves more users than existing system having fixed capacity.
The white area with dashed circle of different femto access
points (FAPs) of later scenario indicates resource scarcity.
With resource scarcity the new users can not be connected to
the system and hence causes call drops, low signal quality and
congestion problem for the existing system. With proposed
IRR scheme the former scenario shows less congestion for the
same number of users causing high user satisfaction in
existing system. Resource is reallocated by the system in such
a way that each connected users (FAPs with dotted white
colored coverage area as shown in Fig. 7) can be served
properly and unutilized resources are harvested to reallocate

342

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Time slot number, Nts
Oedicated resource utilization by dedicated user of channel number k

D
o Opportunistic resouce available for cognitive user of channel number k
Figure 6. Allocated resource rescheduled status in a channel for poposed
IRR scheme in existing advanced heterogeneous wireless network.
Figure 3. Scenario of capacity problem in existing advanced heterogeneous
wireless network.

Figure 7. Scenario of IRR scheme with dynamic capacity and reduced

congestion in existing advanced heterogeneous wireless network.
Figure 4. Scenario of congestion in existing advanced heterogeneous
wireless network.

them to new users (FAPs with light blue colored coverage area
as shown in Fig. 7). As in the network, rate of association of
new users increases in a particular area causes congestion
problem so, as reverse process (rate of existing user leaving
the network) reduces this problem. But there is a predefined
minimum resource allotment is required to allow a new user in
a network which put limits to minimization of congestion.
Therefore, proposed IRR scheme outperforms over existing
scheme in mllllmlzlllg congestion in the advanced
heterogeneous wireless network. In proposed IRR scheme,
when capacity increases for a certain user groups (causing
congestion for existing system), causes less congestion as
shown in Fig. 7 problem by opportunity creation by the system
itself in an intelligent way.
III.

Figure 5. Scenario of resource utilization with IRR scheme capacity and

congestion in existing advanced heterogeneous wireless network.

SYSTEM MODELING

In this section we provide a model of our system

with k number of channels. Advanced wireless network system
having macro integrated femtocellular that is heterogeneous
network is modeled here and details are given in the following:

343

A.

Hypothesis for Opportunistic System Approach

where

We consider four binary hypotheses to provide

coordination among different allocated channels and its user's.
These hypotheses are:
HOO k
,

H01 k
,

H10 k
,

(n Full Empty n)

C.

1, 2, ... ,J of channel k and k

1, 2, ... ,K .

CL,k

High Partial Opportunity (HPO)

"'C
D k ZU_j,k

(3)

k=l

Less Partial Opportunity (LPO)

where ck = wk log2 (1 + SNIRk) is actual capacity with channel

bandwidth wk and signal-to-noise plus interference ratio SNIRk

of channel k and k

Some Decision Preliminaries

System monitors environment continuously to identify

load flow.

[f system finds any user doing real time activity then

system gives this user highest priority of reliability that
is not to interrupt.

If system fmds any user doing non real time activity

then system gives this user lowest priority of reliability
that is tries to interrupt.

[f system manages to create opportunity for new users

then reallocation of resources occurs.

System gives access to new user to avoid congestion

by taking proper measurements of user's mobility,
required resource demand, resource utilization type,
and duration of activity etc.

1, 2, ... ,K .

Opportunistic utilizable channel capacity is

B.

is channel utilization threshold for user

Actual utilized channel capacity is

H11 k
(n Full Occupied n) No Opportunity (NO)
,
where 0 (channel utilization absent) and 1 (channel utilization
present), respectively gives user channel utilization states over
channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
=

_i.k

Full Opportunity (FO)

(n Partial Occupied n)
(n Partial Emptyn)

,j

z1I

Co LJ. - L.J
"'C" U{l.l
-"'c,, """
;\, ([-Z11-1 A )
11\-.LlnnJ. XI-ZU-1 Ie ) 4k L.J
k=l

(4)

k=l

where 1- Z" j,k is channel opportunistic utilizable spaces for

_
user u j , j 1, 2, ... ,.I of channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
_

User's satisfaction in resource utilization is

where s1I j,k is total user's satisfaction of satisfied user, and sk is

_
user's level of satisfaction (0 for no satisfaction and 1 for
satisfied) per channel for total user u j , j 1, 2, ... ,J of
channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
_

Necessary Mathematical Relations

Decision probability of providing proper hypothesis to a

channel during channel resource reallocation is

Total revenue gain of operator is

(1)

(6)

where Pr(Hmn.k) is probability of providing proper hypothesis

to a channel with subscript notation m (where m 0 or 1 )

where Rk is revenue earning of operator, rvk rate of variable cost,

and

(where

channel k and k

0 or 1 ), and /::"k is decision threshold over

user u

1, 2, ... ,K .

D.

Channel resource utilization threshold is

)
10k (Hoo,
k
'

Z11 -j k _

iJ",,, (HaLk )

)
/'k (HlOR

fa'useruj, Mw-ej=l,2, ... ,J

rjk

and

(2)

/" ""' (Lk )

344

j ,j

rate
=

of

fixed

cost

for

1, 2, ... ,.I of channel k and k

contribution

of

1, 2, ... ,K .

Some Basic Observations of System

Is it healthy (without any abnormality) system or not?

[s it fully occupied or not?

Is there any unused resource exists or not?

[s there any user that demanding more or less overhead

than system can provide or not (near/far-location
effect)?

2) Algorithm for hypothesis selection: To select and

reshedule the resources, proper hypotheses selection for each
channel is required and is given as follows.
a) Step I: After system power is on, system
initialization and basic system parameters reading process is
done.

Is there any user that is only connected without doing

any significant activity for a long/predefmed/any
specified time or not?

Is there any user that needs to use the system urgently

with low/high mobility or not?

Is there any user that is leaving the system urgently

with low/high mobility or not?

Is congestion exists or not?

b) Step 2: Check network environment to get

information about user, network, and available resouce
allocation, utilization, and management.

Is congestion exists due to non availability of resources

or not?

c) Step 3: Acoording to step 2 select proper frequency

selection schem and power control scheme.

Is congestion exists due to uncontrolled traffic flow in

a busy area/hot spot or not?

d) Step 4: System continuously monitors the network

and user's activity to control traffic.

Is the quality of signal adequate or not?

e)

Is the rate of user movement inwards or outwards of

the system high/low creates congestion or not?

Step

avalable
hypothesis

5:

At initial stage that is when full opportunity is

for

(rOk)
HOOk

as

all

users
shown

then
m

system
Fig.

2(a)

selects
for

1, 2, ... ,K .

Is call drop rate is high/low due to congestion or not?

channel k and k

Is there any unused resource which is already allocated

or not?

j) Step 6: When user's activity increses in each channel

and in a particular channel resource allocation is utilized upto

Finally, system search for unused resources and reallocate

it again to enhance overall wireless system capacity as shown
in Fig. 7.

lower threshold limit

) of that channel by the user's of

that particular channel then system selects hypothesis H01,k as

shown in Fig. 2(b) for channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
=

IV.

NUMERICAL RESULT

Let us, consider a system as shown in Fig. 3 where number

of serving channel is k with k 1, 2, ... ,K .
=

A.

Table and Algorithm

Data table for analysis: The conditional values used in

the analyses are given in the following table. Different
threshold values are also given in the table.
TABLE!.

upper threshold limit

) of that channel by the user's of that

particular channel then system selects hypothesis H10.k as

shown in Fig. 2(b) for channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
=

1)

Sl.
No.

g) Step 7: Again user's activity increses in each channel

and in a particular channel resource allocation is utilized upto

CONDITIONAL VALUES USED IN ANALYSES

Criteria Details
Description

Full opportunity",

Hoo.k

High partial opportunity" ,

Less partial opportunity" ,

No opportunity" ,

Number of femto user per FAP, II

Number of existing FAP,

Number of extra FAP,

Number of existing macro user , II

Number of extra macro user , u

HOJ.k
HlO.k

ll.k

11

_If

jap

Jape
-

jill

- Jllle

Lower
limit

Upper
limit

0.76

1.00

0.51

0.75

0.26

0.50

0.00

0.25

100

20

1000

400

10

Number of channel, k

10

11

Decision threshold, '" k

12

Channel utilization threshold,

0.00

0.95

Zu _

.
Ik

a. Hypothesis selection criteria. (For IRR scheme)

h) Step 8: Now user's activity increses in each channel

and in a particular channel resource allocation is fully utilized
up to maximum limit (f m"xk) of that channel by the user's of
that particular channel then system selects hypothesis H11,k as
shown in Fig. 2(b) for channel k and k 1, 2, ... ,K .
=

i) Step 9: While system doing this each time, system

conditions changes and step 5 to step 8 is repeated according to
users activity as shown in Fig. 6. Thus, the capacity of the
system changes from static to dynamic to a certain extent
according to different criteria.
B.

Users satisfaction performance comparison

Figure 8 shows that, the capacity of a particular channel in

advanced macro integrated femtocellular or heterogeneous
wireless network provides better user's satisfaction. For
existing system the capacity is static so number of user for a
specific channel number k is fixed though that channel is not
fully utilized by all the users all the time. For this reason at
busy time extra user causes congestion problem. Mean while if
that extra user can be served with reserved resource as shown
in Fig. 1 (left portion) which is proposed in IRR scheme for the
system, then user would suffer less congestion problem which
ensures higher user's satisfaction.

345

C.

Resource utilization and revenue earning of operator

performance comparison

Figure 9 depicts efficient resource utilization for the system

with less congestion with proposed IRR scheme than typical
fixed resource allocation scheme. When there is less actual
resource utilization in existing system then higher the
opportunistic resource utilization exists in IRR scheme. We can
see from Fig. 9 that for a specific channel number k when

user's resource utilization is high, then low possibility of

opportunity to reallocate the resource to extra users of that
particular channel.
Figure 10 shows a revenue gain of operator when efficient
resource utilization occurs for the system with less congestion
with proposed IRR scheme than typical fixed resource
allocation scheme. When there is less actual resource
utilization in existing system then higher the opportunistic
resource utilization exists in IRR scheme which in turn
provides revenue gain opportunity to system operator. Here,
when resource utilization for a specific channel number k is
higher then number of user for that channel k is high and hence
higher the revenue gain for system operator.
v.

t5

20

'hi

. =

= 1=

1D ,.,=

1==

Total number of user connected in channel k, u-.J,k. [Nos]

Figure 8. Performance evaluation for user satisfaction versus total number of

user connected in both static and dynamic capacity system.

_______ Actual utilized resource by dedicated user group (UGd)

0
rtunistic available resource for co nitive user rou

_______

80

;;l

'5

'"

(UGc

60
40
20

CONCLUSIONS

Advanced wireless network is a demanding issue for

reliable and high speed communication with low power
consumption, and user friendly service. For this reason user
satisfaction level need to be consider as an evaluation
parameter in both systems that is with existing fixed capacity
and with proposed IRR scheme dynamic capacity. The user
satisfaction level outperformed in proposed IRR scheme
utilized system than existing typical system with increased
number of users as shown in performance curve. In near future
traffic will increase exponentially more than today so, channel
capacity requirement would be higher than today's system. To
do so with limited resources best utilization of resource is
required. Along with capacity problem, dense traffic in
communication channel causes significant congestion. To
reduce these capacity and congestion problems together,
proposed IRR scheme is a strong candidate to face the
challenges associated. Performance of existing fixed capacity
system in resource utilization and revenue earning of operator
is poor than proposed IRR scheme performance as shown in
evaluation line and bar graphs, respectively. Thus, proposed
IRR scheme is promising one.

10
Time slot number of resource utilization for channel number k, Nts [Nos]

Figure 9. Performance evaluation for resource utilization versus time slot

number of resource utilization for channel number k for both static and
dynamic capacity system.

REFER ENCES

[I]
[2]
[3]

[4]
[5]
[6]

10

[7]

Time slot number of resource utilization for channel number k, N ts [Nos]

Figure 10. Performance evaluation for revenue earning of operator versus

time slot number of resource utilization for channel number k for both static
and dynamic capacity system.

[8]

346

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