Access control of data in integrated voice/data CDMA systems: benefits and tradeoffs

In previous work, access control for data has been proposed as a method to ensure adequate quality of service (QoS) in an integrated voice/data CDMA system. The motivation behind access control is to schedule data packet transmissions in slots when voice activity is low and to curtail data transmissions when the voice load is heavy. In this work, the class of probabilistic access control schemes, wherein data transmissions are controlled by dynamically changing the permission probability, are considered. The trigger for changing the permission probability is a measure of the current uplink load. Perfect power control is assumed first, and the trigger for access control is the power control feasibility condition, Schemes based on prediction are analyzed. While prediction schemes are complex to implement, they do provide an upper bound for performance of access control schemes. A simple and practical access control scheme, proposed earlier in the literature, is then extended. It controls the permission probability for data based on uplink load and a 1-bit broadcast feedback to all of the mobiles. The performance of this scheme depends on the choice of three parameters. It is demonstrated that, through a combined choice of these parameters, access control can be tuned to perform as desired and to yield significant capacity gains over not using access control. Results are then extended to the case of imperfect power control, where the outage criterion is based on limiting the total received power at the base station. In this case, too, the simple control scheme is shown to work well.