Using HSPA to improve the telemedical links on a moving ambulance

As the demand for faster and more effective health care increases, there is a growing need to establish mobile, high-speed communications between a moving ambulance and a consultation point (usually a hospital). The recent addition of HSPA (HSDPA and HSUPA) into the UMTS suite provides higher bandwidth and reduced delays, making this choice ideal for real-time telemedical applications. In this paper, we will describe a set of scenarios that took place in a typical large city area, along with their equivalent results: a moving ambulance was linked with a consultation station using HSPA and several videoconferencing sessions were initiated. Best-case, worst-case and average scenarios were recorded. Furthermore, in areas where the UMTS reception was marginal, a repeater was placed on top of the vehicle to boost up the signal power and thus maintain the higher bandwidth. Finally, treating doctors were asked to evaluate the effectiveness of this system’s outputs, based on a variety of objective and subjective criteria

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

Final report on the evaluation of RRM/CRRM algorithms

Deliverable public del projecte EVERESTThis deliverable provides a definition and a complete evaluation of the RRM/CRRM algorithms selected in D11 and D15, and evolved and refined on an iterative process. The evaluation will be carried out by means of simulations using the simulators provided at D07, and D14.Preprin

Quality of service optimization of multimedia traffic in mobile networks

Mobile communication systems have continued to evolve beyond the currently deployed Third Generation (3G) systems with the main goal of providing higher capacity. Systems beyond 3G are expected to cater for a wide variety of services such as speech, data, image transmission, video, as well as multimedia services consisting of a combination of these. With the air interface being the bottleneck in mobile networks, recent enhancing technologies such as the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), incorporate major changes to the radio access segment of 3G Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). HSDPA introduces new features such as fast link adaptation mechanisms, fast packet scheduling, and physical layer retransmissions in the base stations, necessitating buffering of data at the air interface which presents a bottleneck to end-to-end communication. Hence, in order to provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees to multimedia services in wireless networks such as HSDPA, efficient buffer management schemes are required at the air interface. The main objective of this thesis is to propose and evaluate solutions that will address the QoS optimization of multimedia traffic at the radio link interface of HSDPA systems. In the thesis, a novel queuing system known as the Time-Space Priority (TSP) scheme is proposed for multimedia traffic QoS control. TSP provides customized preferential treatment to the constituent flows in the multimedia traffic to suit their diverse QoS requirements. With TSP queuing, the real-time component of the multimedia traffic, being delay sensitive and loss tolerant, is given transmission priority; while the non-real-time component, being loss sensitive and delay tolerant, enjoys space priority. Hence, based on the TSP queuing paradigm, new buffer managementalgorithms are designed for joint QoS control of the diverse components in a multimedia session of the same HSDPA user. In the thesis, a TSP based buffer management algorithm known as the Enhanced Time Space Priority (E-TSP) is proposed for HSDPA. E-TSP incorporates flow control mechanisms to mitigate congestion in the air interface buffer of a user with multimedia session comprising real-time and non-real-time flows. Thus, E-TSP is designed to provide efficient network and radio resource utilization to improve end-to-end multimedia traffic performance. In order to allow real-time optimization of the QoS control between the real-time and non-real-time flows of the HSDPA multimedia session, another TSP based buffer management algorithm known as the Dynamic Time Space Priority (D-TSP) is proposed. D-TSP incorporates dynamic priority switching between the real-time and non-real-time flows. D-TSP is designed to allow optimum QoS trade-off between the flows whilst still guaranteeing the stringent real-time component’s QoS requirements. The thesis presents results of extensive performance studies undertaken via analytical modelling and dynamic network-level HSDPA simulations demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed TSP queuing system and the TSP based buffer management schemes

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

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

Caracterización y optimización del acceso a Internet a través de UMTS/HSDPA

El principal objetivo de este proyecto es caracterizar y optimizar el acceso a Internet a través del canal de bajada HSDPA y subida con UMTS. El estudio tendrá en cuenta el impacto de los parámetros y mecanismos extremo a extremo de los protocolos. Nuestro estudio se centra en caracterizar las tres capas superiores de la pila de protocolos TCP/IP para así poder estudiar la viabilidad de HDSPA. En nuestro estudio, primero caracterizaremos la latencia del enlace radio midiendo el RTT a nivel de red. En segundo lugar caracterizaremos el ancho de banda del enlace, en los dos sentidos de la transmisión. Finalmente veremos como reacciona el Terminal frente a un cambio de celda. Con todo ello obtendremos conclusiones a nivel de red de dicha tecnología. Para testear el nivel de transporte, calcularemos la ventana óptima y niveles de throughput para distintos tamaños de paquete y ventanas de transmisión de TCP. Para el nivel de aplicación hemos escogido uno de los protocolos de este nivel más populares: HTTP. Estudiaremos su rendimiento y la eficiencia del enlace al trabajar con un protocolo creado para red fija.La tecnología HSDPA es una evolución de la telefonía móvil de tercera generación WCDMA y consiste en un nuevo canal compartido en el enlace descendente, que mejora significativamente la capacidad máxima de transferencia de información hasta alcanzar tasas teóricas de 14 Mbps (1.8 Mbps en despliegues comerciales habituales). HSDPA es una tecnología referida también como la generación móvil 3.5. El principal objetivo del presente trabajo es caracterizar y optimizar el acceso a Internet mediante HSDPA. El enfoque se basa en estudiar el rendimiento de las capas de la pila TCP/IP sobre el citado entorno, teniendo en cuenta el impacto de los parámetros y mecanismos extremo a extremo de los protocolos considerados. En particular, en este estudio se ha considerado la navegación web como ejemplo de aplicación popular cuyo rendimiento sobre HSDPA puede ser optimizado a varios niveles, logrando mejoras significativas con respecto al uso de una configuración de parámetros y mecanismos por defecto habitual. Cabe destacar que el estudio se ha realizado en entornos reales, hecho que proporciona valor añadido a los resultados obtenidos y, por otra parte facilita de forma inherente la transferencia de tecnología