  The allocation of scarce spectral resources to support as many user
applications as possible while maintaining reasonable quality of service is a
fundamental problem in wireless communication. We argue that the problem is
best formulated in terms of decision theory. We propose a scheme that takes
decision-theoretic concerns (like preferences) into account and discuss the
difficulties and subtleties involved in applying standard techniques from the
theory of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) in constructing an algorithm that is
decision-theoretically optimal. As an example of the proposed framework, we
construct such an algorithm under some simplifying assumptions. Additionally,
we present analysis and simulation results that show that our algorithm meets
its design goals. Finally, we investigate how far from optimal one well-known
heuristic is. The main contribution of our results is in providing insight and
guidance for the design of near-optimal admission-control policies.
