This work considers a single-cell random access channel (RACH) in cellular
wireless networks. Communications over RACH take place when users try to
connect to a base station during a handover or when establishing a new
connection. Within the framework of Self-Organizing Networks (SONs), the system
should self- adapt to dynamically changing environments (channel fading,
mobility, etc.) without human intervention. For the performance improvement of
the RACH procedure, we aim here at maximizing throughput or alternatively
minimizing the user dropping rate. In the context of SON, we propose protocols
which exploit information from measurements and user reports in order to
estimate current values of the system unknowns and broadcast global
action-related values to all users. The protocols suggest an optimal pair of
user actions (transmission power and back-off probability) found by minimizing
the drift of a certain function. Numerical results illustrate considerable
benefits of the dropping rate, at a very low or even zero cost in power
expenditure and delay, as well as the fast adaptability of the protocols to
environment changes. Although the proposed protocol is designed to minimize
primarily the amount of discarded users per cell, our framework allows for
other variations (power or delay minimization) as well.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, 3 tables. Springer Wireless Networks 201