Location-Based Network Resource Management

Abstract

The vision that wireless technology in the near future will provide mobile users with at least similar multimedia services as those available to the fixed hosts is quite established today. Towards this direction, extensive research efforts are underway to guarantee Quality-of-service (QoS) in mobile environments. An important factor that affects the provisioning of resources in such environments is the variability of the environment itself. From the user’s perspective, this variability is a direct consequence of the user’s movement and, at any given time, a function of his position. Exploiting the user’s location to optimally manage and provision the resources of the mobile network is likely to enhance both the capacity of the network and the offered quality of service. In this chapter, we aim to provide a general introduction to the emerging research area of mobile communications, which is generally known as location-based network resource management.