IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO.

5, SEPTEMBER 2003

911

Dynamic Random Access Code Assignment

for Prioritized Packet Data Transmission in
WCDMA Networks
Dong In Kim, Senior Member, IEEE, Ekram Hossain, Member, IEEE, and Vijay K. Bhargava, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a measurement-based

dynamic random access (RA) code assignment procedure for
prioritized packet data transmission in wideband code-division
multiple access (WCDMA) networks. This dynamic adaptation
process is based on analytical performance results derived for
random packet access under Rayleigh fading in WCDMA networks. The performance of the proposed measurement-based
RA code assignment procedure with three different adaptation
methods is evaluated by using computer simulations. The performance of the proposed scheme is compared with those of a
retransmission control-based and static channel allocation-based
prioritized packet access scheme. An integrated (physical layer
and link layer) delay-throughput performance model is presented
for finite population RA WCDMA systems. The proposed dynamic
RA code assignment procedure can be used in an adaptive quality
of service (QoS) framework for dynamically adjusting the QoS
of prioritized RA data traffic in the evolving WCDMA-based
differentiated services wireless Internet protocol networks.
Index TermsMeasurement-based resource allocation,
quality of service (QoS), wideband code-division multiple access
(WCDMA), wireless Internet protocol (IP).

I. INTRODUCTION
IDEBAND direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) is being considered as one of the
candidate radio transmission technology for IMT-2000, the
third-generation wireless communication system ([1], [2]) which
is expected to provide a variety of broadband mobile services including high-speed Internet access. Evolving wideband CDMA
(WCDMA)-based wireless Internet protocol (IP) networks will
be required to handle prioritized data traffic in the WCDMA
air-interface. To meet the diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements of different data traffic flows (which are inherently
bursty) and at the same time to achieve high resource utilization, dynamic resource management would be required. In

Manuscript received August 14, 2001; revised February 28, 2002; accepted
May 15, 2002. The editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving
it for publication is Q. Bi. This work was supported in part by the Brain Korea
21 Research Project in 2000 and in part by a Strategic Project Grant from the
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada.
D. I. Kim was with the University of Seoul, Seoul 130-743, Korea. He is now
with the School of Engineering Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC
V5A 1S6, Canada (e-mail: dikim@sfu.ca).
E. Hossain is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V6, Canada (e-mail:
ekram@ee.umanitoba.ca).
V. K. Bhargava is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver BC V6T 1Z4, Canada
(e-mail: vijayb@ece.ubc.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2003.816795

this paper, we are concerned with the dynamic management

of random access (RA) code channels in WCDMA networks.
We apply the concept of measurement-based dynamic resource
management to provide predictive QoS1 to prioritized uplink
common-channel data traffic in WCDMA systems. Noteworthy
is the fact that devising efficient resource management mechanisms in the presence of highly bursty packet data traffic (e.g.,
self-similar wireless web traffic [4], [5]) is a big challenge.
In a WCDMA network, packet data transmission from a mobile station (MS) is based on multicode spread slotted ALOHA.
Each packet (or RA burst) transmitted within a frame period
(which is further divided into time offsets/time slots) consists
of a fixed preamble part and a variable length data part. The
preamble part of a packet is transmitted using a preamble code
or RA code while the data part is spread and modulated using
a scrambling code which is selected based on the randomly
chosen preamble code and the randomly chosen time offset. Differential services to the different data traffic flows can be provisioned through prioritized access to RA code channels.
In addition to resource underutilization, fixed assignment
(FA) of RA code channels may cause prolonged QoS degradation to high-priority data packets. Therefore, we consider a
dynamic RA code assignment process which is based on the
traffic load-sensing in the base station (BS). In this paper, we
consider data traffic with two different priorities. The QoS
measure that we consider here is , the success rate for the
high-priority RA packets, which is measured as the ratio of
high-priority RA packet throughput ( ) and high-priority RA
packet load ( ). For a certain traffic load, this metric is in turn
related to the average network access delay performance for the
high-priority packets. Although achieving high packet success
rate ( ) and at the same time high system throughput ( ) (i.e.,
total number of successful RA attempts per slot) are conflicting
networking goals, an efficient RA code assignment mechanism
is expected to provide a reasonably good performance tradeoff
between total throughput ( ) and high-priority packet success
rate ( ).
Optimal code assignment would require the BS to have exact
knowledge of the uplink data traffic, which may not be realizable in the case of bursty packet data transmission. Therefore,
heuristic-based code channel assignment policies are sought for
which may not necessarily result in an optimal solution but some
suboptimal solutions (from the viewpoint of total throughput
and QoS tradeoff).
1It is better than the best-effort QoS from the viewpoint of realization
of QoS [3].

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The motivation of our work in this paper is also due to

another issue of concern in the design of WCDMA-based
wireless packet data networks. It is the understanding of the
impacts of different physical layer parameters on higher layer
protocol [e.g., radio link control (RLC)/medium access control
(MAC)] performance which would be required for protocol
stack performance optimization. We derive some analytical
results for performance evaluation of uplink common channel
packet access in terms of different physical layer parameters
in a WCDMA system. An integrated (physical layer and link
layer) delay-throughput performance model based on those
results and some exact Markov analyses are also presented.
The performance of the proposed measurement-based dynamic
RA code allocation procedure is evaluated through computer
simulation. The performance of the proposed scheme is also
compared with those of a retransmission control-based and a
static allocation-based prioritized packet access schemes.
The organization of the rest of the paper is as follows. In Section II, we describe the proposed dynamic RA code assignment
procedure. RA packet access performance in the WCDMA
radio interface is evaluated in Section III assuming multipath
Rayleigh fading channels. The simulation results for the proposed measurement-based RA code assignment procedure with
three different adaptation methods are presented in Section IV.
In Section V, we present an integrated performance model
based on exact Markov analyses to evaluate the delay-throughut
performance under different static channel assignments and/or
fixed probability retransmission control and to evaluate the
impact of different physical layer parameters on RLC/MAC
layer performance. In Section VI, conclusions are stated.
II. DYNAMIC RA CODE ASSIGNMENT PROCESS
To realize the measurement-based dynamic RA code assignment, traffic load is sensed at the BS over a measurement
time slots. In general, traffic load in this case
window of
can be measured based on the channel throughput (i.e., average
number of RA requests successfully received) since throughput
is a function of the offered load (i.e., average number of RA
attempts) on the uplink common channel [i.e., RA channel
(RACH)]. The dynamic RA code assignment can be implemented through a multistate system operation as described
below. The system state can be described by the number of RA
code channels allocated to highlow priority data traffic. In the
conventional case where each MS can randomly choose any
one of the RA code channels irrespective of the priority of
the RA packet, the system operates in a single-state mode.
Under the proposed dynamic RA code assignment scheme,
the system can be in any one of the
states, where
depending on the value of the parameter
. The
here denotes the minimum number of RA codes
parameter
allocated to high-priority packets.
The system operates in state
(
) until overload
is sensed in the BS receiver after which it switches to some
other state which is determined based upon the sensed total of, and the proportion of high-prifered load, the parameter
ority traffic load in the total offered load measured in the observation window . Note that, such a scheme does not re-

quire any identification mechanism for the packet type (i.e.,

high-priority/low-priority) in the data part of a transmitted frame
since the receiver at the BS can identify the packet type based
on the RA code associated with the packet. Identification of
packet type, say, by appending only identification bit(s) in the
RA burst might become difficult due to wireless channel errors. Again, identification of packet type, say, by using specific
scrambling code in the data part depending on the packet type,
would introduce additional overhead for load estimation at the
BS receiver. Therefore, the proposed dynamic code assignment
scheme would not incur much overhead from the implementation viewpoint.
The load estimation is based on an exponential weighted
average estimate of the correctly received packets at the BS
receiver. The parameters of the measurement process are the
length of the measurement window , low-pass filter gains
used for the measurement process, the state switching threshold
which denotes the desired success rate for the high-priority RA packets, and the guard-value for the state-switching
) or guard-load (
).
threshold (
One way of dynamic adjustment of RA codes is to perform
proration of RA codes in a memoryless fashion based upon the
measured load on the presently allocated RA codes for high- and
low-priority RA packets. That is, RA code reassignment is done
after each measurement period based on the proportion of load
of each traffic type during the measurement period. This method
is referred to as the proportional adjustment (PA) method.
Another way is linear adjustment (LA) in which case the
number of RA codes allocated for high-priority packet access
can be incrementeddecremented depending on the estimated
QoS. We refer to this method as the LA method. Due to
the CDMA soft capacity [6], the degradation in RA packet
throughput performance would presumably not become very
significant in the case of occasional traffic overload. In fact,
this soft capacity allows for a gradual adaptation in resource
allocation rather than a more aggressive and abrupt resouce
adaptation. Therefore, the LA method is expected to offer
reasonably good performance.
A hybrid of the PA and LA methods is one in which RA
code allocation for high-priority traffic is increased in proportion to corresponding measured load while the decrement in
code channel is performed in a linear fashion. We refer to one
such method described in this paper as the proportional-increment linear-decrement (PL) method.
The LA and PL methods may provide a better isolation of
RA code resources for high-priority RA packets compared with
that in the case of PA method especially when the RA traffic
load due to low-priority packets increases significantly (e.g., due
to some hot-spot traffic and/or good channel condition). The
algorithms for these three methods will be presented later in this
paper.
and , where
The modified assignment of the RA codes
, is broadcast by the BS so that the RLC/MAC
mechanism in an MS can control the RA procedure depending
on the traffic priority. In the case of a high (low)-priority RA
codes randomly
packet, an MS will choose one of those
to encode the preamble part of the packet. It is to be noted that,
in the conventional case, which we refer to as the FA scheme

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Fig. 1. Receiver structure for preamble detection.

in this paper, an MS can choose any one of the RA codes

irrespective of the data traffic priority.
The measurement-based RA code assignment procedure as
described above requires estimation of the network offered QoS
). The
( ) from the measured system load ( ,
analytical results derived in the following section enable us to
make such an estimation.
It is to be noted that, the above methods can be extended
for dynamic code channel allocation among packet flows with
more than two priority levels. But a good tradeoff between QoS
and channel utilization would become increasingly difficult to
achieve as the number of priority levels increases.
III. RELATIONSHIP AMONG SYSTEM LOAD, RA THROUGHPUT,
AND RA SUCCESS RATE IN FADING CHANNELS
We consider a WCDMA uplink RACH where the frame duration is five time slots and the length of each time slot is 2 ms.
symbols which are
An RA packet has the preamble part of
specified by
spread by a common RA short code of length
the BS in a cell. A set of orthogonal preamble patterns is generated using symbols from the set of
symbols and an MS
chooses one among these patterns randomly. The preamble
part of an RA packet can be followed by some other information such as the source address all of which are assumed to fit
into the slot period of 2 ms. This padded information can be
encoded by one of the scrambling codes which can be selected
based on the chosen preamble pattern.
Before transmitting an RA packet, an MS has to acquire the
frame timing from the broadcast channel and the information
regarding the cell-specific RA short code and the preamble patterns. Next, an open-loop power adjustment is carried out to
eliminate the effects of shadowing and path loss so that the transmission is affected only by fast fading. A mobile terminal selects the preamble pattern randomly depending on the operation
mode and traffic type and subsequently transmits the RA packet.
We assume a fast Rayleigh fading channel with resolvable
paths. It is also assumed that the fade variation on each path remains unchanged during the preamble part of the RA packet and
that the scattering is uncorrelated with equal average path power.
An RA packet is assumed to be correctly received at the BS if
there is only one transmission attempt in an RA code channel
and sufficient signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) is

achieved during the preamble detection (Fig. 1). In addition, we

may introduce a small additional random delay to properly resolve those transmissions using the same RA code at the same
time in the presence of multipath, and the details of the preamble detection in such a case can be found in [7]. Here, the
multipath delays associated with different users will be distinct
so that collisions can be resolved, but a conservative assumption on the success event (i.e., only single transmission in an
RA code channel) is made in this paper.
An RA packet is processed at the BS to find the corresponding
preamble pattern by correlating with the candidate patterns
which are orthogonal to each other. The BS sends a positive
acknowledgment if the correlated output exceeds a prespecified
threshold. Otherwise, the RA attempt is declared to be failed
and the MS attempts retransmission after a random delay.
A. Preamble Detection
Preamble detection is performed using a single matched filter
followed by -preamble pattern correlators with a RAKE-type
square-law combiner, as shown in Fig. 1.
After despreading (matched filtering), the output signal can
be modeled as

(1)
denotes the Rayleigh-faded path gain of the first (dewhere
sired) user in the first RA code channel that is collision-free,
is the first preamble symbol pattern,
and
indiis a triangular pulse over
cate the path delay and phase,
with
and symbol time
, the
multiple access interferences (MAIs)
and
represent the RA/traffic channel interferences incurred by and
simultaneous transmissions, respectively (
implies the
,(
denotes
self-noise from desired signal),
is the background noise.
the integer part of ), and
By using an RA short code of period , it follows that
is correlated with
, while there exists

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no correlation in
because of long codes in the traffic
channel. We note that and correspond to two partial correlation values after despreading in case of mismatched symbols.
Due to the processing gain of per symbol, it turns out that
the effective interference plus noise can be approximated as independent complex Gaussian variable with zero mean and variance (except the self-noise), as follows [8]:
(2)
where refers to the frequency reuse factor in a cellular CDMA
system.
( denotes the
We have assumed above that
, and per-path signal energy
expectated value),
( is symbol energy). With
, we have the
, instead of
, in the first term of (2) because one of
factor
two partial correlation values turns out to be zero after the first
preamble correlator due to orthogonality.
Then, the decision statistics after correlation over the
symbol periods is equivalent to

Note that (5) gives a conservative estimate of the preamble

detection probability assuming a single-shot RA probe, where
the MAI statistics of the preamble detection include the autoand cross-correlation effects among the preamble sequences
as well as the data traffic channels, unlike that addressed in
[8]. If the RA follows a power-ramping procedure in access
attempts (i.e., if the first probe fails, the second probe will
be transmitted with higher power to increase the success
probability), the preamble detection probability increases with
increasing transmitter power. However, analysis of the preamble detection probability with this power-ramping procedure
is mathematically intractable because of strong correlation in
MAI statistics between successive RA probes, especially in the
presence of correlated fading.
B. RACH Throughput
Let us denote by
the probability that exactly RA
packets are received without collision when there are RA attempts on the RA code channels.
Proposition 2:

(6)

(3)
where

is assumed and
. Hence, the second-order moment
, given
( denotes the complex conjugate), becomes

(4)
where the first term is due to the self-noise (since
, it is ignored), and
.
Therefore, the decision variable in a RAKE combiner can
which has the noncentral disbe defined by
degrees of freedom and noncentral parameter
tribution with
[9].
Proposition 1: The preamble detection probability can be
and can be derived as
defined by
(5)
where the effective SINR is defined by
, and the
threshold can be adjusted with the false-alarm rate
being specified. It is interesting to note that
.
Proof of Proposition 1: See Appendix A.

where
and
.
Proof of proposition 2: See Appendix B.
If we assume that the aggregate RA traffic (i.e., both the new
and the backlogged RA packets) can be modeled by a Poisson
distribution with arrival rate , then the channel throughput
can be evaluated as
(7)
. For a given value of , the average
where
number of collision-free RA packets measured at the BS is related to the traffic load by (7).
Fig. 2 shows typical variations in throughput and RA packet
success rate with offered load for some typical values of the
,
,
system parameters (e.g., for
dB,
,
,
,
,
,
). The number of active traffic
channels per carrier per cell is assumed to be 50 (i.e.,
).2 The frequency reuse factor is assumed to be 1.5 (i.e.,
), since, typically, the other-cell interference is approximately equivalent to about 50% of the in-cell interference [10].
Also, the diversity reception is typically based on two-finger
coherent RAKE receiver [11]. Therefore, as a typical value,
is assumed. The -preamble patterns are generated
from the Hadamard sequences of
. The correlation values
are calculated using the Hadamard sequences of
with
. It is to be noted that reliable RA preamble detection
.
can be assured with the false-alarm rate of
2In a typical cellular CDMA system, for example, in IS-95, there are 64 traffic
channels per 1.25-MHz carrier.

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915

Fig. 2. Variations in RA throughput and RA success rate with RA traffic load (for Poisson model).

Therefore, as a typical value,

is assumed in this
paper.
If the traffic load increases beyond some threshold value, the
RA packet success rate falls below the desired value. For ex, as exceeds 3.6, falls below 0.75. In the
ample, with
case of dynamic RA code assignment, the state transition can be
triggered at this point. It is to be noted that for a particular value
of , a decrease in the value of (which is assumed to be the
QoS parameter, in this paper) implies an increase in the average
packet access delay for high-priority packets.
The above formulation enables us to evaluate the effects of
different physical layer parameters on RLC/MAC layer performance in the case of RA packet transmission in a WCDMA
system. This would be required for system design with protocol
stack performance optimization in WCDMA-based wireless IP
networks.
IV. MEASUREMENT-BASED RA CODE
ASSIGNMENT PROCEDURE
As has already been described in Section II, in the case of
dynamic measurement-based code allocation that we consider
states (
in this paper, the system can be in any one of the
).
corresponds to the state where
and
all the RA attempts corresponding to the high-priority packets
code channels.
are made using the
and the measured load on the
If the system state is
code channels exceeds some threshold corresponding
(i.e.,
,
and
to the
refer to the threshold-load and guard-load corresponding
and
, respectively), or equivalently, if the
to
) [i.e.,
achieved QoS ( ) falls below the QoS threshold (
], then in the case of PA method of RA

code channel assignment, the system switches to state

where
. Here,
and
refer to the
measured load corresponding to high-priority and low-priority
traffic, respectively, during an observation window. The estimated value of corresponding to a value of may be obtained
by some customized software routine based on the analytical
relationship derived in Section III.
results on
In the case of the LA method of operation, the RA code reassignment is done in an additive fashion. That is, if
, the system switches to state
, and if
, the system switches to state
.
In the case of the PL method of operation, the number of RA
codes for high-priority packets is incremented in proportion to
the measured high-priority load. But the decrement operation is
done linearly. In all three cases, even if the newly calculated
falls below
, the system state is retained in
. System
evolution in other states occurs in a similar manner.
Let
be the measurement window size (in time slots).
Then, the measurement-based RA code assignment procedure
performed in the three cases (i.e., PA, LA, and LP) can be
described through -like code, as follows.
In the case of PA-based RA code assignment, the adaptation
procedure can be described as follows:

1.
,
2.
,
Measure

3.If (
a)
b)

,
,
and

) {

,
,

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c) If (
)

or

(pdf) and the expected value of a Pareto-distributed random variable are given by [5]

(8)
d) Switch to state
} /* If */
Else go to step 2.
The average load and the average success probability are measured using a low-pass filter.3 To capture the short term increase
in load resulting from the bursty nature of RA data traffic, the
value of the time constant of the low-pass filter (i.e., , ) is
chosen to be relatively large (e.g., 0.8).
In the case of the LA method, Step 3(c) in the above procedure
will be as follows:
) {

If (

} /* If */
Else if (

)
.

In the case of the LP method, Step 3(c) goes as follows:

If (

Else if (

)
.

A. Simulation Model
To analyze the performance of the proposed measurementbased RA code channel assignment procedure described above
and to identify the suitable method of adaptation, we simulate
the system behavior under two different traffic generation scenario referred to as Poisson Model and Pareto Model, as
described below.
1) Poisson Model: In this model, the number of RA packets
generated per time slot is Poisson distributed with mean . The
value of is kept constant during the entire simulation period.
Of the total packets generated in a slot, fraction of them are
chosen to be high-priority RA packets while the rest of them
are considered as low-priority RA packets. Under this model,
typical variations in RA packet throughput ( ) with RA packet
load ( ) in a conventional system are as shown in Fig. 2.
2) Pareto Model: In this scenario, the number of RA packets
generated in a time slot is Pareto distributed with mean . Pareto
distribution is characterized by slowly decaying tail and high
variability. Therefore, it induces a strongly bursty RA packet
arrival process in our model. The probability density function
3Similar exponential smoothing technique is used for estimation of various
network parameters such as the round-trip time estimate for a transmission control protocol (TCP) connection and the average queue-size in an Internet router.

where is called the Pareto shape parameter and the parameter

represents the smallest possible value of the random variable.
, the distribution has infinite variance, and if
, the
If
distribution has also infinite mean.
It is to be noted that, although the traffic generation process
follows a Pareto distribution, for estimation of , we use the
relationship defined by (7). If the values of the Pareto
same
shape parameter and the location parameter were known,
the Pareto model-based standard
relationship could be
obtained in this case using (7) (with
substituted for
).
A -coded time-driven simulator is used for performance
evaluation. For each point in the simulation result set, the simulator run-time is taken to be sufficiently large (e.g., 5 000 000
time slots) so that accurate performance measures are obtained
by averaging the results from each time slot. The assumed values
in this paper are 0.8 and 0.6 for Poisson and Pareto traffic
of
are asmodels, respectively. The corresponding values of
sumed to be the same as the values of . The assumed values
,
for the other simulation parameters are as follows:
,
,
,
,
dB,
,
,
,
,
,
.
In contrast with the Poisson model, in the case of Pareto
is
model for RA packet generation, the value of
much less even for moderately low values of (Fig. 3). For
,
, when
example, with
and
, respectively, while for
, the
corresponding values are
, respectively. While simulating the RA code assignment procedure,
for both the traffic
we assume similar range of values for
models.
B. Performance Results for the Dynamic Code Assignment
Scheme
1) Poisson Model: Simulation results show that in the
conventional case of RA code channel assignment (i.e., with
FA scheme), falls off rapidly with increase in the value of
(Fig. 4). For the assumed values of the simulation parameters,
, as long as
in the convenwe observe that
tional RA procedure. For as large as 10.00, the success rate
for RA packets is about 0.5.
With a PA-based RA code assignment, system performance
is more or less similar to that in the case of the FA method while
only at relatively large values of (e.g., 10) small improvement
in is observed. But with the LA method, improves significantly at higher system loads. The performance improvement in
terms of is achieved at the expense of decreased throughput of
the low-priority RA packets with a consequent decrease in total
RLC/MAC layer throughput . For example, with the assumed
simulation parameters, for
, in case of conventional RA

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Fig. 3.

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Variations in RA throughput and RA success rate with RA traffic load (for Pareto model).

Fig. 4. Performance comparison of FA, LA, PA, and PL methods for Poisson model (for L

code assignment,
and the resulting
, while
with the dynamic LA-based RA code assignment,
and
when
. Therefore, improvement in
high-priority RA packet success rate of about 21% is achieved
in this case at the expense of 24% decrease in total RA packet
throughput. This tradeoff improves at higher values of .
Simulation results show that the performance of PL-based dynamic RA code adjustment is comparable with that of the LA
is relatively large (e.g., 0.75, 0.80) the
scheme and when
,
two schemes perform almost identically. For a particular

= 4).

on the total throughput ( ) and

the effects of variation in
the packet success rate for high-priority packets ( ) are illustrated in Fig. 5. Variations in and with
are observed
to be more sensitive for LA and PL-based adaptation methods
compared with those for PA-based adaptation, and that for rela, better success rate (for high priority
tively large values of
packets) is achieved with LA- and/or PL-based adaptation. Differences among performance results at higher values of
(e.g., 0.8, 0.85) are observed to be negligibly small. PA-based
.
adaptation is found to be not much sensitive to variation in

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Fig. 5. Effect of 

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

on the performance of LA, PA, and PL methods for Poisson model (for L

It is observed that for the assumed traffic model and the

load estimation procedure, for the assumed dynamic adaptation
does not have signifiinterval (100 time slots), the value of
cant impact on the system throughput and high-priority packet
success rate performance in the case of all three adaptation
would be more
methods. For dynamic adjustment of QoS,
effective compared with
under the proposed adaptation
framework.
is decreased, the packet success rate
As the value of
and throughput corresponding to high-priority packets increase,
but the overall system throughput falls due to reduction in
throughput corresponding to low-priority packets. Therefore,
can be chosen based on the desired tradeoff
the value of
between and .
It is to be noted that, although the desired value of
may
not be achieved, clearly a service differentiation between the
low-priority and high-priority RA packets can be achieved with
reasonably high channel utilization with LA/PL-based RA code
assignment in the proposed adaptation framework over a wide
range of system load and QoS values.
2) Pareto Model: Simulation results show that when the
value of , the Pareto shape parameter, is relatively low (e.g.,
1.1), PA method may even perform poorer than FA scheme in
terms of both and while consistently better is achieved
for the LA and PL methods at the cost of degradation in
(Fig. 6). For example, with
, when
, about 32%
improvement in is observed while decreases by about 16%
in the case of LA-based adaptation. Similar to the case with
tradeoff improves as is increased. For
Poisson model,
, improves by about 22% at the expense
example, with
of about 10% reduction in .
Interestingly, as increases, depending on the value of ,
the dynamic RA code assignment methods outperform the FA
,
scheme in terms of both and . For example, when

= 4, 

= 0:1).

and
for
this performance crossover occurs at
LA/PL and PA methods, respectively (Fig. 7). As increases,
the crossover points move left in the axis; for example, with
, the crossover occurs at
and
for LA/PL
and PA methods (Fig. 8), respectively.
We observe that fluctuations in and with may become
irregular with increase in in the case of PL-based adaptation.
In contrast, the variations in and with under the same
conditions are more structured (and hence, more predictable)
with LA-based adaptation. Therefore, the latter is a more robust
adaptation method.
C. Performance Comparison With Retransmission Control
and Static Code Channel Allocation-Based Prioritized Packet
Access
In a WCDMA system, service differentiation in the case of
uplink common channel packet access can also be achieved
by assigning different retransmission probabilities and/or a different number of code channels corresponding to the different
packet types. Here, we compare the performances of fixed probability retransmission control-based and static allocation-based
prioritized packet access with the performance of the dynamic
RA code channel assignment-based prioritized packet access in
terms of total RA packet throughput and success rate for highpriority packets. Both the Poisson and the Pareto traffic models
are considered where the aggregate number of RA packets generated during each time slot (i.e., newly generated packets and
backlogged packets) is PoissonPareto distributed with mean .
In the case of fixed probability retransmission control, for an
average traffic load , the actual channel load
during a time
slot which depends on the retransmission control parameters
,
and the backlog
and corresponding to high and
low-priority packets, respectively, can be expressed as follows:

KIM et al.: DYNAMIC RA CODE ASSIGNMENT FOR PRIORITIZED PACKET DATA TRANSMISSION

Fig. 6. Performance results for Pareto model (for L

= 4,  = 1:1, 

= 0:8).

Fig. 7. Performance results for Pareto model (for L

= 4,  = 1:3, 

919

= 0:8).

, for
.
Here, an immediate first transmission mode is considered for
the newly generated packets (i.e., packets from nonbacklogged
,
is assumed to be the same as
terminals). For
.
In the case of static channel allocation the actual channel load,
which is distributed between the two sets of preassigned code
channels corresponding to the high-priority and the low-priority
data packets, is the same as the average traffic load .

Performance results in Figs. 9 and 10 indicate that better

packet success rate for the high-priority packets can be achieved
with LA-based dynamic code channel assignment. For the retransmission control-based scheme, as the retransmission control parameters are decreased, system throughput ( ) decreases
and high-priority packet success rate ( ) increases. For the static
assignment case, as the number of code channels allocated for
the high-priority traffic ( ) is increased, increases but at the
cost of decreased . For the Pareto model, depending on the

920

Fig. 8. Performance results for Pareto model (for L

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

= 4,  = 1:5, 

= 0:8).

Fig. 9. Performance comparison among various prioritized packet access schemes for Poisson model (SA

value of the Pareto shape parameter, better system throughput

and at the same time better packet success rate for the high-priority data packets can be achieved with the proposed LA-based
dynamic code channel assignment scheme.
V. AN INTEGRATED DELAY-THROUGHPUT PERFORMANCE
MODEL FOR A FINITE POPULATION SYSTEM
In this section, we pesent an integrated delay-throughput
performance model for uplink packet access in a finite pop-

 static assignment, RC  retransmission control).

ulation WCDMA system. It is a programmable performance

model based on exact Markov analyses that can be used to
assess the impact of the different physical layer parameters on
the link-layer performance measures and, hence, the higher
layer protocol (e.g., TCP) performance can also be evaluated.
The number of code channels, along with the retransmission
probabilities corresponding to the high- and low-priority
packets, can be varied. This model is also useful in the case
of dynamic code channel allocation in a time-scale when each
state stabilizes before switching to another state.

KIM et al.: DYNAMIC RA CODE ASSIGNMENT FOR PRIORITIZED PACKET DATA TRANSMISSION

Fig. 10.

921

Performance comparison among various prioritized packet access schemes for Pareto model.

Suppose that the system is operating at a certain instant with

preamble codes for
the RA code assignment, as follows:
high-priority traffic and
preamble codes for low-priority
traffic and the total number of users is . Each user generates
an RA packet with probability and the probability of that
being a high-priority data packet is . A blocked user retransmits the RA packet with probability
or depending on the
priority of the RA packet and it does not generate a new RA
packet until the current one is successfully transmitted.
) represent the number of
Let the random variables ( ,
blocked users at time with high-priority and low-priority data
traffic, respectively. Then, the system evolution can be described
by a Markov chain with state space consisting of the set of in, where if
and
, an
tegers
integer in this set can be related to and , as follows:
(9)
and
,
. For a given
Since
the numbers ( , ) are uniquely determined, as follows:

.
where is as defined in (9) and
Proposition 3: The state transition probabilities
can be described by (13), at the bottom of the
next page, where
Proof of Proposition 3: See Appendix C.
The Markov chain described by the above state transition
probabilities is irreducible, and hence, a stationary probability distribution
exists which can be
computed by solving the following set of simultaneous linear
equations:

(14)

with
[12].
The steady-state throughput
is given
by (15), at the bottom of the next page, where
,(
).
Then, the steady-state throughput for both high-priority and
low-priority data traffic is

(10)

(11)

(16)
in (10) with ( ,
Referring to
is
number of blocked users

) in (11), the expected

Using these definitions, the one-step state transition probabil) can be expressed as follows:
ities from the state ( ,
(17)
(12)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

Finally, applying Littles result [13], the average delay in the

blocked state is

(18)
On the other hand, in the conventional case, all access requests can be transmitted using any one of preamble patterns,
and then the Markov chain is described only by the total number
with state space as the set of
of blocked users
. Similarly, the one-step state transition
integers
probability
is derived as in (19), where

(19)
The steady-state channel throughput
tained using

can then be ob-

(20)
where
users is
blocked state is

and the mean number of blocked

. Therefore, the average delay in the
.

,
Some typical results are shown in Fig. 11 (for
,
,
,
dB,
,
,
,
,
,
). Specific performance behaviors (rather than average
) can be assessed from
performance in the case of
the presented theoretical framework.
It is to be noted that using parameter (instead of using two
parameters
and ) enables us to avoid manipulation of a
two-dimensional Markov chain. Therefore, the complexity of
the delay-throughput performance evaluation is reduced.
VI. CONCLUSION
Analytical results have been presented for performance evaluation of RA packet access in WCDMA networks in a Rayleigh
fading environment. A measurement-based dynamic RA code
assignment procedure for prioritized RA packet transmission
has been proposed. Simulation results have revealed that for
short-range dependent traffic arrival patterns, a good performance tradeoff between the total system throughput and the
required QoS can be achieved with the LA/PL-based adaptation methods in the proposed dynamic RA code assignment
framework. In addition to differentiated QoS among high- and
low-priority RA packets, higher system throughput may also
be achieved within the proposed dynamic RA code assignment
framework in the case of long-range dependent traffic arrival
patterns. The LA-based adaptation is found to be the most robust among all the methods described in this paper.
An integrated (physical layer and link layer) delaythroughput performance model based on exact Markov
analyses has been presented which can be used to assess the
impact of different physical layer parameters and link layer
parameters (e.g., retransmission control parameters, channel
allocation parameters) on higher layer protocol performance
for prioritized uplink packet access in WCDMA systems.

(13)

(15)

KIM et al.: DYNAMIC RA CODE ASSIGNMENT FOR PRIORITIZED PACKET DATA TRANSMISSION

Fig. 11.

Delay-throughput performance under specific RA code assignment (for L

APPENDIX A
PROOF OF PROPOSITION 1
First, if the effective
able has the pdf [9]

923

= 10, L = 6).

equation (23) is simplified to

Gaussian, the decision vari(25)

Further, applying the following relationsip:
(21)

where
is the modified Bessel function of the first kind and
order . Under uncorrelated scattering and equal average path
power,
(noncentral parameter) is central
disdegrees of freedom, and the pdf is
tributed with
(22)
. Therefore, the probability
condiwhere
tioned on RA attempts is given by (23), at the bottom of the
page, where we have assumed the changes of variables
and
, and also the order of integration has been
changed.
Using the following relationship:

(24)

(26)
, we obtain the probalong with the change of variable
in (5). With a chip-rate preamble processing, the
ability
false-alarm rate before a RAKE is
, where the self-noise in
replaced by .
(4) would be increased with
APPENDIX B
PROOF OF PROPOSITION 2
Let us define the index sets
and
as
and
, which represent the RA messages attempted in a slot and the RA codes
being used for the message encoding, respectively. Then, the
is equivalent to the collection of all
mapping of
possible ways in which RA messages will select any one of

(23)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 2, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

RA codes with equal probability. For this, we define a set

where order counts , where
.
To apply the principle of inclusion and exclusion from comas
binatorics [14], we define a set
has the property that the RA message
is collision-free against other
Then, the number of elements satisfying exactly

messages
properties is

(27)
denotes the number of properties satisfied by an
where
, and is any possible subset of the index set
element
with size
. Since each property is equally likely to
occur, it turns out that
(28)

Now, it remains to find the number of occurrences of the event

of RA messages are collision-free, which
that at least
is given by
(29)
. Hence, combining the above results, the
with
probability distribution
is derived as (6).

REFERENCES
[1] E. Dahlman, P. Beming, J. Knutsson, F. Ovesj, M. Persson, and C.
Robol, WCDMA the radio interface for future mobile multimedia
communications, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 47, pp. 11051118,
Nov. 1998.
[2] Concept Group Alpha Wideband Direct-Sequence CDMA, Evaluation Document (3.0), Part 1: System Description & Performance Evaluation, UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), ETSI SMG2, draft
document (3.0), 1997.
[3] J. Kurose, Open issues and challenges in providing quality of service guarantees in high-speed networks, ACM SIGCOMM Comput.
Commun. Rev., vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 615, Jan. 1993.
[4] Z. Harpantidou and M. Paterakis, Random multiple access of broadcast
channels with Pareto distributed packet interarrival times, IEEE Pers.
Commun., vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 4855, Apr. 1998.
[5] M. O uz Sunay, S. Tekinay, and S. Zorlu zer, Efficient allocation of
g

radio resources for CDMA-based wireless packet data systems, in Proc.

IEEE GLOBECOM99, vol. 1B, Dec. 1999, pp. 638643.
[6] R. Kohno, R. Meidan, and L. B. Milstein, Spread spectrum access
methods for wireless communications, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 33,
pp. 5867, Jan. 1995.
[7] D. I. Kim and J. C. Roh, Performance of slotted asynchronous CDMA
using controlled time of arrival, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 47, pp.
454463, Mar. 1999.
[8] M. B. Pursley, Performance evaluation for phase-coded spread-spectrum multiple-access communication Part I: System analysis, IEEE
Trans. Commun., vol. 25, pp. 795799, Aug. 1977.
[9] A. D. Whalen, Detection of Signals in Noise. New York: Academic,
1971.
[10] A. J. Viterbi, A. M. Viterbi, and E. Zehavi, Other-cell interference in
cellular power-controlled CDMA, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 42, pp.
15011504, Feb./Mar./Apr. 1994.
[11] R. Esmailzadeh and M. Gustafsson, A new slotted ALOHA based
random access method for CDMA systems, in Proc. IEEE ICUPC97,
vol. 1, Oct. 1997, pp. 4347.
[12] L. Kleinrock and S. S. Lam, Packet switching in a multiaccess
broadcast channel: Performance evaluation, IEEE Trans. Commun.,
vol. COM-23, pp. 410423, Apr. 1975.
[13] L. Kleinrock, Queueing Systems. New York: Wiley, 1975, vol. I and II.
[14] D. A. Cohen, Basic Techniques of Combinatorial Theory. New York:
Wiley, 1978.

APPENDIX C
PROOF OF PROPOSITION 3
Given the number of blocked users (
,
),
thinking users transmit with probability
while out of RA packets correspond to high-priority packet
. Also, ( , ) blocked users transmit
with probability
with probability
, which produces a
and
RA attempts on the corresponding
total
and RA codes. The number of successful attempts on the
and
RA code channels is considered to follow binomial
distribution with the detection probability
, conRA attempts.
ditioned on the total
and
RA attempts succeed
Now, if
and
code channels, respectively, then the system
on the
moves to state (
,
). Thus, the number
of collision-free packets ( , ) on the code channels should
and
be
. Under S-ALOHA with perfect
collision channel assumption, success of an RA attempt requires
that there is only one attempt on the corresponding RA code, and
can be derived as (13).
hence,

Dong In Kim (S89M91SM02) received the

B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronics engineering
from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in
1980 and 1984, respectively, and the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, in 1987
and 1990, respectively.
From 1984 to 1985, he was with the Korea
Telecommunication Research Center as a Researcher. During 19861988, he was a Korean
Government Graduate Fellow in the Department
of Electrical Engineering, USC. In 1991, he was with the University of
Seoul, Seoul, Korea, leading the Wireless Communications Research Group.
He is now with Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada, where he
is an Associate Professor of the School of Engineering Science. He was a
Visiting Professor at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, during
19992000. He has performed research in the areas of packet radio networks
and spread-spectrum systems since 1988. His current research interests include
spread-spectrum systems, cellular mobile communications, indoor wireless
communications, and wireless multimedia networks.
Dr. Kim has served as an Editor for the IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS
IN COMMUNICATIONS: WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS SERIES and also as a Division Editor for the Journal of Communications and Networks. Currently, he
serves as an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS and the
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS.

KIM et al.: DYNAMIC RA CODE ASSIGNMENT FOR PRIORITIZED PACKET DATA TRANSMISSION

Ekram Hossain (S98M01) received the B.Sc.

and M.Sc. degrees in computer science and engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering
and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, in
1995 and 1997, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
in electrical engineering from the University of
Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, in 2000.
He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. He was a
Fellow with the University of Victoria. His main research interests include radio link control and transport layer protocol design
issues for the next-generation wireless data networks.
Dr. Hossain currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS.

925

Vijay K. Bhargava (S70M74SM82F92)

received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees from
Queens University, Kingston, Canada in 1970,
1972, and 1974, respectively.
He is a Professor and Chair of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at the University of British
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. He is a coauthor of
the book Digital Communications by Satellite (New
York: Wiley, 1981) and coeditor of the IEEE Press
Book ReedSolomon Codes and Their Applications
(New York: IEEE, 1994). His research interests are
in multimedia wireless communications.
Dr. Bhargava was the President of the IEEE Information Theory Society
in 2000, Co-Chair for IEEE ISIT95, Technical Program Chair for IEEE
ICC99, and was the Chair of IEEE VTC 2002 Fall. He is a Fellow of the
B.C. Advanced Systems Institute, Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and
the Royal Society of Canada. He is a recipient of the IEEE Centennial Medal
(1984), IEEE Canadas McNaughton Gold Medal (1995), the IEEE Haraden
Pratt Award (1999), and the IEEE Third Millennium Medal (2000).