SALALAH -- Amid the cellular technology becoming one of the fastest growing forms of mobile communications, an Omani researcher has thrown light on wireless network through his research on 'Resource management schemes in wireless networks'. Dr Zaid Zabanoot , Dean Salalah College of Applied Sciences has done extensive research on the topic to find that "the bounds of an existing communication network infrastructure have been extended by cellular technology via connecting mobile units to public networks operated by the local exchange or long distance carriers, in order to make special features and functions specific to both cellular and public networks available to all users."

Global standards, according to him, have been developed to provide voice and data services anytime and anywhere regardless of user mobility, while satisfying their diverse Quality of service (QoS) requirements. "The frequency spectrum allocated for cellular communications is very limited. The success of today's cellular network is mainly due to the frequency reuse concept. This is why the coverage area is divided into cells, each of which is served by a base station (BS). Each BS (or cell) is assigned a group of radio channels according to the transmission power constraints and availability of spectrum." Commenting on the motivation behind doing the research and compiling it into a book, Dr Zabanoot said: "Over the years, wireless network communication systems have been experiencing a dramatic and continuous growth in the number of subscribers, thus placing extra demands on system capacity. The area has tremendous scope for research, as something new is happening on daily basis in the field."

Dr Zabanoot held important positions as member in building up computer science and information technology departments in three new academic institutions in Oman before being elevated as Dean. A B Eng degree holder from Sultan Qaboos University, Dr Zabanoot did his M Sc and Ph D from University of Bradford. Oman's IT standards, according to Dr Zabanoot, are quite satisfactory. Still he calls for more and more research in the field to keep pace with global developments. Offering solution to radio co channel interference, Dr Zabanoot says, "A channel can be a frequency, a time slot or code sequence. To avoid radio co channel interference, the group or channels assigned to one cell must be different from the group of channels assigned to its neighboring cells. However, the same group of channels can be assigned to the two cells that are far enough apart such that the radio co-channel interference between them is within a tolerable limit."

Dr Zabanoot outlines the objectives of the research as "Developing an analytical model for priority handover mechanisms and optimise the number of channels assigned to handover calls, with the aim of minimising the drop probability under given network scenarios." This is also aimed at developing and providing a performance model for a two-cell model as one network system and measure the different performance parameters for each of the cells in the network altogether as one network system. The research also offers a solution for re-allocation of the unutilised bandwidth to be used fairly by all nodes who request a bandwidth as also to develop a new performance moder for macro/micro cells network which supports fast and slow mobility users.