Channel resource allocation and availability prediction in hybrid access femtocells

In this paper, three channel assignment models are proposed for channel resource allocation in femtocells. The models proposed are based on the Markov chain process. According to the access mechanisms in femtocells, the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has described two kinds of users in the femtocell application; open users and the closed subscriber group (CSG). In hybrid access mechanism for femtocells, both CSG users and open users are usually referred as subscribers and non-subscribers respectively. So, in this work, for all the proposed models, the CSG and open users are categorized into two groups; the subscriber group (SG) and the non-subscriber group (NSG) respectively. The proposed models provide priority based channel resource allocation strategies between the SG and NSG. Furthermore, the focus of this research is to provide variable channel resource sharing among the SG and NSG to keep the wastage of channel resources minimum for better quality of service (QoS). The analysis is conducted in terms of channel resource blocking management for all the models and to validate the analysis, simulations are performed at the end of this paper. Further, channel resource blocking prediction, based on the blocking probability results for SG and NSG users, is also provided at the end. The prediction is done through risk analysis using the @ Risk tool. The simulations are provided in two parts; 1) the probability curves for SG and NSG against the total number of channels and 2) the risk analysis results for blocked channels prediction using the @ Risk tool.