An Efficient Simulation Environment for 3rd Generation Cellular Networks

Together with measurements and analytical methods, the simulation-based evaluation of cellular systems will be increasingly important as the deployment of new mobile applications imposes new requirements both on the radio interface and on the fixed network infrastructure. Efficient allocation of the network’s resources must be based on reliable and flexible performance evaluation techniques. In this paper we describe a simulation environment optimized for the performance analysis of wideband cellular networks. To handle the complexity of the system without losing low-level details due to a high-level abstraction, a hierarchical simulation structure is developed which is also largely based on the integration of analytical evaluations’results into the simulation. The resulting structure can surprisingly efficiently (both in terms of simulation run time and in terms of modeling flexibility and speed) simulate large and complex systems while the level of abstraction can be freely selected in a wide range by the user. For instance, in case studies we find that simulation times of ATM based cellular networks can be an order of a magnitude less than using most of the readily available simulators. Though the simulation environment described here is specific to ATM/AAL2 based mobile networks, the proposed concept is more widely applicable to accelerate simulations.