Assessing the WiFi offloading benefit on both service performance and EMF exposure in urban areas

Abstract

In this paper we assess the benefit of WiFi offloading over dense urban scenarios in terms of both Quality of Service (QoS) and Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure. This study relies on results obtained with two complementary simulation platforms: a two-tier dynamic system-level simulator and a 3D coverage-based simulator. Outputs are usual service coverage key performance indicators, handover probability statistics, as well as common and innovative metrics for EMF exposure characterization that jointly take into account the contributions from the base-station and the User-Equipment (UE) transmissions. The main outcome is that, for elastic services, the best QoS and minimum global EMF exposure are jointly achieved with maximum WiFi offloading.This paper reports work undertaken in the context of the FP7 project LEXNET (GA nº 318273). Ramón Agüero also acknowledges the Spanish Government for the project “Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future”, COSAIF (TEC2012-38574-C02-02)