science

Radio resource management

Radio resource management is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Radio resource management rather than just read about it. In short: Radio resource management (RRM) is the system level management of co-channel interference, radio resources, and other radio transmission characteristics in wireless communication systems, for example cellular networks, wireless local area networks, wireless sensor systems, and radio broadcasting networks. RRM involves strategies and algorithms for controlling parameters such as transmit power, user allocation, beamf…

Key takeaways

Radio resource management belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Radio resource management to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Radio resource management from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Radio resource management (RRM) is the system level management of co-channel interference, radio resources, and other radio transmission characteristics in wireless communication systems, for example cellular networks, wireless local area networks, wireless sensor systems, and radio broadcasting networks. RRM involves strategies and algorithms for controlling parameters such as transmit power, user allocation, beamforming, data rates, handover criteria, modulation scheme, error coding scheme, etc. The objective is to utilize the limited radio-frequency spectrum resources and radio network infrastructure as efficiently as possible. RRM concerns multi-user and multi-cell network capacity issues, rather than the point-to-point channel capacity. Traditional telecommunications research and education often dwell on channel coding and source coding with a single user in mind, but when several users and adjacent base stations share the same frequency channel it may not be possible to achieve the maximum channel capacity. Efficient dynamic RRM schemes may increase the system spectral efficiency by an order of magnitude, which often is considerably more than what is possible by introducing advanced channel coding and source coding schemes. RRM is especially important in systems limited by co-channel interference rather than by noise, for example cellular systems and broadcast networks homogeneously covering large areas, and wireless networks consisting of many adjacent access points that may reuse the same channel frequencies. The cost for deploying a wireless network is normally dominated by base station sites (real estate costs, planning, maintenance, distribution network, energy, etc.) and sometimes also by frequency license fees. So, the objective of radio resource management is typically to maximize the system spectral efficiency in bit/s/Hz/area unit or Erlang/MHz/site, under some kind of user fairness constraint, for example, that the grade of service should be above a certain level. The latter involves covering a certain area and avoiding outage due to co-channel interference, noise, attenuation caused by path losses, fading caused by shadowing and multipath, Doppler shift and other forms of distortion. The grade of service is also affected by blocking due to admission control, scheduling starvation or inability to guarantee quality of service that is requested by the users. While classical radio resource managements primarily considered the allocation of time and frequency resources (with fixed spatial reuse patterns), recent multi-user MIMO techniques enables adaptive resource management also in the spatial domain. In cellular networks, this means that the fractional frequency reuse in the GSM standard has been replaced by a universal frequency reuse in LTE standard.

Static radio resource management Static RRM involves manual as well as computer-aided fixed cell planning or radio network planning. Examples:

Frequency allocation band plans decided by standardization bodies, by national frequency authorities and in frequency resource auctions. Deployment of base station sites (or broadcasting transmitter site) Antenna heights Channel frequency plans Sector antenna directions Selection of modulation and channel coding parameters Base station antenna space diversity, for example Receiver micro diversity using antenna combining Transmitter macro diversity such as OFDM single frequency networks (SFN) Static RRM schemes are used in many traditional wireless systems, for example 1G and 2G cellular systems, in today's wireless local area networks and in non-cellular systems, for example broadcasting systems. Examples of static RRM schemes are:

Circuit mode communication using FDMA and TDMA. Fixed channel allocation (FCA) Static handover criteria

Dynamic radio resource management Dynamic RRM schemes adaptively adjust the radio network parameters to the traffic load, user positions, user mobility, quality of service requirements, base station density, etc. Dynamic RRM schemes are considered in the design of wireless systems, in view to minimize expensive manual cell planning and achieve "tighter" frequency reuse patterns, resulting in improved system spectral efficiency. Some schemes are centralized, where several base stations and access points are controlled by a Radio Network Controller (RNC). Others are distributed, either autonomous algorithms in mobile stations, base stations or wireless access points, or coordinated by exchanging information among these stations. Examples of dynamic RRM schemes are:

Power control algorithms Precoding algorithms Link adaptation algorithms Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA) or Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) algorithms, allowing "cell breathing" Traffic adaptive handover criteria, allowing "cell breathing" Re-use partitioning Adaptive filtering Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) Dynamic diversity schemes, for example Soft handover Dynamic single-frequency networks (DSFN) Phased array antenna with beamforming Multiple-input multiple-output communications (MIMO) Space-time coding Admission control Dynamic bandwidth allocation using resource reservation multiple access schemes or statistical multiplexing, for example Spread spectrum and/or packet radio Channel-dependent scheduling, for instance Max-min fair scheduling using for example fair queuing Proportionally fair scheduling using for example weighted fair queuing Maximum throughput scheduling (gives low grade of service due to starvation) Dynamic packet assignment (DPA) Packet and Resource Plan Scheduling (PARPS) schemes Mobile ad hoc networks using multihop communication Cognitive radio Green communication QoS-aware RRM Femtocells

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Radio resource management

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Radio resource management claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Radio resource management before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Radio resource management ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Radio resource management

In research: Radio resource management appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Radio resource management in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Radio resource management is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Radio resource management, Radio technology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Radio resource management outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Radio resource management in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Radio resource management means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Radio resource management out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Radio resource management in simple terms?

Why does Radio resource management matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Radio resource management?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Radio resource management.