Method and apparatus for allocating network rates

摘要

A method for allocating network rates to a plurality of mobile terminals through which users access possibly different applications through a network having a certain limited total bandwidth to allocate, said method comprising:
using as an input to an optimizing operation a quality utility function which indicates for a certain application the quality perceived by a user depending on the allocated data rate, preferably further also depending on the channel condition,
performing said optimizing operation such that it calculates a combined quality measure based on the quality utility functions for the different applications and for different possible resource allocations to the plurality of applications in such a way that said quality measure is optimized by finding among the plurality of possible resource allocations the resource allocation for which said quality measure reaches an extremum, to thereby obtain an overall optimized resource allocation for the network, wherein said method further comprises:
applying said optimizing function such that it uses a penalty parameter in such a way that it penalizes a resource allocation for which the amount of deterioration of the user perceived quality compared to the user perceived quality in the past at one or
more of said mobile terminals would exceed a certain threshold compared to another resource allocation for which the user perceived quality compared to the user perceived quality in the past does not exceed said certain threshold.