Network capacity and quality of service management in F/TDMA cellular systems

As a consequence of rapidly increasing mobile communications, efficient utilization of the scarce radio resources becomes one of the most important issues in the system evolution. Increase of the system capacity has been investigated in two ways. The first way is to replace the fixed channel allocation (FCA), with the more efficient dynamic channel allocation (DCA). The second way is to utilize those traffic channels not being used by voice services to provide a packet data service, like general packet radio service (GPRS) and cellular digital packet data (CDPD). In this thesis, the author have proposed two DCA schemes and developed an analysis method to investigate the GPRS impact on the GSM voice services. In addition, the GPRS downlink performance is investigated and some guidelines or principles for GPRS network planning have been presented. In the proposed DCA algorithms, the effect of the channel allocation on existing calls is considered by the evaluation of the call outage rate or a cost function. In the first proposed algorithm, in order to evaluate the call outage caused by those candidate channels, a method of estimating the average signal to interference ratio (SIR) variation of on-going calls due to the assignment of a coming call has been developed. This algorithm improves the capacity or QoS performance compared with the first available and maximum SIR schemes. In the second proposed algorithm, a cost function has been introduced to estimate the cost of the assignment of a candidate channel. The performance evaluation shows that by using the cost-function for channel pre-selection the problem of high intracell handover rate for the first available based scheme can be decreased to an adequate level and the time of the call set-up can be shortened. An analysis method to calculate the outage probability of the GSM-GPRS network for both the non-frequency hopping and frequency hopping systems has been presented to investigate the GPRS impact on GSM voice services. It is found that: GPRS affects more on the QoS of voice services of the network with small reuse factor; GPRS will reduce the cell service area, but the reduction percentage of the cell service area for the system with small reuse factor is higher than that for the system with large reuse factor; those channels unused by voice services might not all be used for carrying GPRS traffic; the number of unused voice channels which can be allocated to GPRS depends on the difference between the outage level of the existing GSM network and the maximum acceptable level. From final part of this work, it is found that: GPRS capacity performance in downlink is quite different from that in uplink because of the difference in the transmission protocols; multiple-slot allocation does not show a gain of the mean throughput neither a decrease on the mean delay compared to single slot allocation. This result is different from the result of the uplink performance. In multi-rate services, the multi-slot services significantly increase the delay of the single-slot service, consequently, a control of the multi-slot services is needed.reviewe

Prediction of Airborne Contamination in Conventionally-Ventilated Cleanrooms

An important facet of designing cleanrooms is the prediction of the volume of air necessary to achieve the required airborne cleanliness in the room. Current experience shows that these predicted volumes are often too high and the air conditioning plant is consequently oversized. The design has traditionally been a matter of experience tempered with a little knowledge of fluid dynamics

Next generation communications satellites: multiple access and network studies

Efficient resource allocation and network design for satellite systems serving heterogeneous user populations with large numbers of small direct-to-user Earth stations are discussed. Focus is on TDMA systems involving a high degree of frequency reuse by means of satellite-switched multiple beams (SSMB) with varying degrees of onboard processing. Algorithms for the efficient utilization of the satellite resources were developed. The effect of skewed traffic, overlapping beams and batched arrivals in packet-switched SSMB systems, integration of stream and bursty traffic, and optimal circuit scheduling in SSMB systems: performance bounds and computational complexity are discussed

Rule-based system architecting of Earth observation satellite systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 399-412).System architecting is concerned with exploring the tradespace of early, high-level, system design decisions with a holistic, value-centric view. In the last few years, several tools and methods have been developed to support the system architecting process, focusing on the representation of an architecture as a set of interrelated decisions. These tools are best suited for applications that focus on breadth - i.e., enumerating a large and representative part of the architectural tradespace -as opposed to depth - modeling fidelity. However, some problems in system architecting require good modeling depth in order to provide useful results. In some cases, a very large body of expert knowledge is required. Current tools are not designed to handle such large bodies of knowledge because they lack scalability and traceability. As the size of the knowledge base increases, it becomes harder: a) to modify existing knowledge or add new knowledge; b) to trace the results of the tool to the model assumptions or knowledge base. This thesis proposes a holistic framework for architecture tradespace exploration of large complex systems that require a large body of expert knowledge. It physically separates the different bodies of knowledge required to solve a system architecting problem (i.e., knowledge about the domain, knowledge about the class of optimization or search problem, knowledge about the particular instance of problem) by using a rule-based expert system. It provides a generic population-based heuristic algorithm for search, which can be augmented with rules that encode knowledge about the domain, or about the optimization problem or class of problems. It identifies five major classes of system architecting problems from the perspective of optimization and search, and provides rules to enumerate architectures and search through the architectural tradespace of each class. A methodology is also defined to assess the value of an architecture using a rule-based approach. This methodology is based on a decomposition of stakeholder needs into requirements and a systematic comparison between system requirements and system capabilities using the rules engine. The framework is applied to the domain of Earth observing satellite systems (EOSS). Three EOSS are studied in depth: the NASA Earth Observing System, the NRC Earth Science Decadal Survey, and the Iridium GEOscan program. The ability of the framework to produce useful results is shown, and specific insights and recommendations are drawn.by Daniel Selva Valero.Ph.D

End-to-end key performance indicators in cellular networks

Masteroppgave i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi 2006 - Høgskolen i Agder, GrimstadThe continuing growth of customers taking advantage of the available services means greater load on the cellular network. Optimization is the key to ensure that the network can provide a reasonable level of service-quality. Service providers want to examine their network and be assured that their network is performing well. Teleca Wireless Solutions is a company that does this for service providers, and an end-toend test tool could be proven useful to examine the cellular networks overall performance from an end users point of view. To ensure that one has a tool that does this in an appropriate way, one must ensure, the application is based on testing the right key performance indicators for relevant services. Such services may be popular services like FTP and WEB. In this thesis, we have researched what affects the end users performance and performed practical end-to-end performance tests in cellular networks. Our goal is to define which key performance indicators are affecting the network’s performance at different network layers and for different services. We have paid special attendance to the high latency of the wireless links, and the delay introduced with the radio access bearer establishment. By measurements we have shown that the 3rd generation cellular network UMTS not surprisingly outperforms EDGE regarding commonly used services like HTTP/WEB and FTP. We have discovered that while TCP throughput is good when transferring large files over FTP, the high latency of the wireless link makes the HTTP performance bad compared to potential TCP throughput. Our work has concluded with which key performance indicators an end-to-end test application should measure for services as HTTP and FTP, to give an overall view of the cellular network’s performance. We have proposed enhancements to an already existing end-to-end test tool

Testing a federation architecture in collaborative design process

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1996.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-146).by Jen-Diann Chiou.M.S

NASA Tech Briefs Index, 1978

Approximately 601 announcements of new technology derived from the research and development activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are presented. Emphasis is placed on information considered likely to be transferrable across industrial, regional, or disciplinary lines. Subject matter covered includes: electronic components and circuits; electron systems; physical sciences; materials; life sciences; mechanics; machinery; fabrication technology; and mathematics and information sciences