Mobility: a double-edged sword for HSPA networks

This paper presents an empirical study on the performance of mobile High Speed Packet Access (HSPA, a 3.5G cellular standard) networks in Hong Kong via extensive field tests. Our study, from the viewpoint of end users, covers virtually all possible mobile scenarios in urban areas, including subways, trains, off-shore ferries and city buses. We have confirmed that mobility has largely negative impacts on the performance of HSPA networks, as fast-changing wireless environment causes serious service deterioration or even interruption. Meanwhile our field experiment results have shown unexpected new findings and thereby exposed new features of the mobile HSPA networks, which contradict commonly held views. We surprisingly find out that mobility can improve fairness of bandwidth sharing among users and traffic flows. Also the triggering and final results of handoffs in mobile HSPA networks are unpredictable and often inappropriate, thus calling for fast reacting fallover mechanisms. We have conducted in-depth research to furnish detailed analysis and explanations to what we have observed. We conclude that mobility is a double-edged sword for HSPA networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first public report on a large scale empirical study on the performance of commercial mobile HSPA networks

Optimal Bundle of Multimedia Services in Emerging Mobile Markets

Although various emerging technologies have been launched, they present limitations as far as offering full-scale ubiquitous services independently is concerned. In view of this fact, service providers are likely to provide bundled services among possible combinations of services. Indeed, making a timely decision regarding the value maximization of bundled service is directly related to service providers' future growth and success in the turbulent market environment. This paper aims to find the optimal service bundle among five emerging mobile services: T-DMB, S-DMB, WiBro, HSDPA, and Telematics. Considering what kinds of service features among the five emerging services offer differentiation to customers, we examine four attributes (TV, voice, portable wireless internet, and location-based services) using conjoint analysis to distinguish the service features. Our results show that TV service is the most favored among the attributes, followed by voice service in second position, and the internet and location-based service in third and fourth place respectively. Our result implies that mobile operators would be better off bundling HSDPA and S-DMB first, and then adding other services later, while fixed operators would be better off bundling WiBro and S-DMB first and other services later.telecommunications and broadcasting convergence; emerging service; 4G Technology; T-DMB; S-DMB; WiBro; HSDPA; telematics; customer preference

Performance Analysis of 3G Communication Network

In this project, third generation (3G) technologies research had been carried out to design and optimization conditions for 3G network. The 3G wireless mobile communication networks are growing at an ever faster rate, and this is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Some services such as e-mail, web browsing etc allow the transition of the network from circuit switched to packet switched operation, resulting in increased overall network performance. Higher reliability, better coverage and services, higher capacity, mobility management, and wireless multimedia are all parts of the network performance. Throughput and spectral efficiency are fundamental parameters in capacity planning for 3G cellular network deployments. This project investigates also the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) throughput and spectral efficiency performance of the standard Universal Mobile Telecommunications system (UMTS) system for different scenarios of user and different technologies. Power consumption comparison for different mobile technology is also discussed. The analysis can significantly help system engineers to obtain crucial performance characteristics of 3G network. At the end of the paper, coverage area of 3G from one of the mobile network in Malaysia is presented

WCDMA multiclass downlink capacity and interference statistics of cigar-shaped microcells in highways

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11277-013-1048-5In this paper, the multiclass downlink capacity and the interference statistics of the sectors of a cigar-shaped microcells using wideband code-division multiple-access with soft handover mode are analyzed. The two-slope propagation model with log-normal shadowing is used in the analysis where a model of 8 cigar-shaped microcells is utilized. The performance of the downlink is studied for different [sector range R, standard deviation of the shadowing (σ1 and σ2) and propagation exponents (s1 and s2)]. It is found that increasing the sector range from 500 to 1,000 m will increase the sector downlink capacity. Also, it is found that increasing the value of the propagation parameters (σ1 and σ2) will reduce the downlink sector capacity. It is noticed that, the effect of changing the propagation exponent s1 is null while increasing the propagation exponent s2 will increase the downlink capacit

Optimization and Performance Analysis of High Speed Mobile Access Networks

The end-to-end performance evaluation of high speed broadband mobile access networks is the main focus of this work. Novel transport network adaptive flow control and enhanced congestion control algorithms are proposed, implemented, tested and validated using a comprehensive High speed packet Access (HSPA) system simulator. The simulation analysis confirms that the aforementioned algorithms are able to provide reliable and guaranteed services for both network operators and end users cost-effectively. Further, two novel analytical models one for congestion control and the other for the combined flow control and congestion control which are based on Markov chains are designed and developed to perform the aforementioned analysis efficiently compared to time consuming detailed system simulations. In addition, the effects of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) transport network (S1and X2 interfaces) on the end user performance are investigated and analysed by introducing a novel comprehensive MAC scheduling scheme and a novel transport service differentiation model

A study of mobile VoIP performance in wireless broadband networks

Voice service is to date still the killer mobile service and the main source for operator revenue for years to come. Additionally, voice service will evolve from circuit switched technologies towards packet based Voice over IP (VoIP). However, using VoIP over wireless networks different from 3GPP cellular technologies makes it also a disruptive technology in the traditional telecommunication sector. The focus of this dissertation is on determining mobile VoIP performance in different wireless broadband systems with current state of the art networks, as well as the potential disruption to cellular operators when mobile VoIP is deployed over different access networks. The research method is based on an empirical model. The model and experiments are well documented and based on industry standards for voice quality evaluation. The evaluation provides results from both experiments in a controlled laboratory setup as well as from live scenarios. The research scope is first, evaluate each network technology independently; second, investigate vertical handover mobility cases; third, determine other aspects directly affecting end user experience (e.g., call setup delay and battery lifetime). The main contribution of this work is a systematic examination of mobile VoIP performance and end user experience. The research results point out the main challenges for achieving call toll quality, and how derive the required changes and technological performance roadmap for improved VoIP service. That is, investigate how the performance and usability of mobile VoIP can eventually be improved to be a suitable substitute for circuit switched voice. In addition, we evaluate the potential disruption to cellular operators that mobile VoIP brings when deployed over other access networks. This research extends the available knowledge from simulations and provides an insight into actual end user experience, as well as the challenges of using embedded clients in handheld devices. In addition, we find several issues that are not visible or accounted for in simulations in regard to network parameters, required retransmissions and decreased battery lifetime. The conclusion is that although the network performance of several wireless networks is good enough for near toll quality voice in static scenarios, there are still a number of problems which make it currently unfeasible to use as a primary voice service. Moreover, under mobility scenarios performance is degraded. Finally, there are other issues apart from network performance such as energy consumption, hardware limitations and lack of supporting business models (e.g., for WiFi mesh) that further limit the possibility of rolling out mobile VoIP services

Telecommunications Network Planning and Maintenance

Telecommunications network operators are on a constant challenge to provide new services which require ubiquitous broadband access. In an attempt to do so, they are faced with many problems such as the network coverage or providing the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). Network planning is a multi-objective optimization problem which involves clustering the area of interest by minimizing a cost function which includes relevant parameters, such as installation cost, distance between user and base station, supported traffic, quality of received signal, etc. On the other hand, service assurance deals with the disorders that occur in hardware or software of the managed network. This paper presents a large number of multicriteria techniques that have been developed to deal with different kinds of problems regarding network planning and service assurance. The state of the art presented will help the reader to develop a broader understanding of the problems in the domain