A Simulation Framework for Service Continuity over Multi Access Wireless Networks

Abstract

Mobile communication systems have continued to evolve by the release of new standards for HSPA and the release of new standards for LTE in release 8 and release 9. The new releases aim
at providing higher data rates to accommodate the envisioned services of 3GPP in voice, data, image transmission, video, multimedia service and broadband services. Catering for a wide
variety of services to satisfy the demands imposed on mobile networks by the user diversity and demanding applications, the air interface has been identified as the major bottleneck in the
mobile networks. Network planning engineers and operators are deploying the new air interfaces in the same cell sites, which gives rise to several internetworking issues among the different air
interfaces from radio resources management to service call continuity issues due to user's mobility and changing point of attachment. Deployment of different air interfaces coupled with
traffic diversity requests further complicates the managements of the mobile networks.

One of The main objectives of this research is to propose and evaluate solutions that address the internetworking of the different radio air interfaces in proposing a call admission control
algorithm that can utilize different air interfaces capabilities and to determine which traffic types are better suited to be serviced by an interface. The proposed algorithm will consider the
availability of the interface, the load of the network and the user equipment capabilities. Another main objective of this research is to propose and evaluate solutions that address changing the
point of attachment of the users due to mobility in the form of handover algorithm. The proposed algorithm will consider the coverage of the node, direction and speed of the user, the network load, the air interface availability and the user equipment capabilities. Another main objective of this research is to design and implement a simulation system which includes all 3GPP
standardized technologies. The simulation tool was designed as a discrete event simulation (DBS) system which includes all the standardized air interface technologies and services. The
simulation tool was designed using Visual C# to take advantage of the object oriented capabilities of the Windows environment and libraries. The simulation tool was essential in evaluating the proposed algorithms in the first two objectives.

Date of Award	Apr 2010
Original language	English
Supervisor	Khalid Al-Begain (Supervisor) & Akram Hammoudeh (Supervisor)