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Figure 12: Wines WWW traffic model parameters configuration window The parameterization of the (different) traffic models for the defined services of this study (WWW, FTP, Video-call, Speech and Mobile TV) was an activity done in close cooperation with France SFR and it is shown in the appendix 3 (Traffic Models parameters). Also the parameterization of the System Parameters was done in cooperation with SFR. The assumptions regarding the propagation conditions are explained in the next two chapters (for each corresponding scenario: homogeneously and non-homogeneously distributed traffic), as well as the other system parameters, which mostly were mapped from the real-settings of the Vodafone UMTS network to try to reflect as close as possible the configuration of RNCs and Node Bs of the company. These parameters appear in the appendix 4 (confidential: system parameters).

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4.5 Summary of chapter 4

Static simulation vs. Dynamic simulation Static simulations dont have a time reference and therefore are not suitable to simulate algorithms that have a strong dependence of time (like RRM algorithms). However, the degree of abstraction in the Static Simulations is still enough to allow for meaningful statistical evaluations of the network KPIs. In fact, this is the method currently used for initial dimensioning for large networks because they are more efficient in terms of time required to complete a simulation (given its more simplistic modeling approach). The Dynamic simulator, on the other hand, is a tool that is able to track the network status as it evolves over time. Dynamic simulator is therefore an ideal tool for: -) Design and Test of RRM algorithms -) RRM parameter optimization, specially those based on time (e.g. handover timers), which is not possible with Static Simulation because the lack of the time reference of that approach -) Detailed Capacity, Coverage and Quality Analysis of specific areas -) Tests of the capacity-coverage tradeoff with different service mixes and with different user profiles -) Analyze packet data throughput The disadvantage of the dynamic approach is that requires high computational resources due to the complexity of the necessary algorithms and therefore the time required to perform dynamic simulations is considerably higher, which means that for networks with several hundreds or thousands of sites, the Dynamic Simulation is not the best approach at the present time.

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5. Description of the First Simulation Scenario and General Setup of the Simulation Experiments
This chapter describes the Radio Network Layout and Environment chosen for the 1st simulation scenario, including the assumptions made for the defined services, the traffic mix of the services and the assumed traffic distribution matrices. It also includes the simulation plan, which describes what has to be done in each of the proposed experiments per each scenario. The complete list with all the configured system parameters and traffic model parameters is given in the confidential annexes [system parameters] and [traffic model parameters] respectively.

5.1 Simulation and Analysis areas

Figure 13: First Simulation Scenario, simulation (red) and analysis (yellow) area

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The Figure above illustrates the first Simulation Scenario. The Network Layout (including RNC, Node Bs, Antennas) as well as the path-loss prediction was imported from a Project created in ATOLL radio planning Tool, and it is based on a real scenario (it is an area taken from the radio planning map of the city of Bordeaux, France). This scenario was selected because it was defined as the Base for common capacity dimensioning studies between the branches of Vodafone in different countries, including The Netherlands. The network layout itself consists on: -) 7 node Bs in the Analysis Area (with 3 cells each one = 21 cells) -) 19 node Bs in total in the simulation Area. -) Inter-site distance = 900 meters The Simulation Area represents the area in where the users are created and once created they are moving in. This Area is represented in the Figure 13 with red borders and has an area of 12 Km2. The Analysis Area, which is the area where data is collected, is shown in the Figure 13 with yellow borders. It has an area of 5 Km2.

5.2 Environment Assumptions

The main assumptions for this first scenario are a flat landscape (No Digital Elevation Model is used) and the Homogeneously-distributed traffic for each of the defined services, therefore no clutter definition and neither traffic maps based on clutter data were used for this scenario. This assumption results in identical sites per simulation area, and given the symmetry in the geometrical distribution of the nodes regarding their intersite distances, each one may be considered a prototype site at the initial dimensioning stage, as it is correctly mentioned in [Jaber]. Another consequence of the assumption is that as the model is considered to be flat, it doesnt make sense then to include the shadowing model (i.e. the fading in the signal caused by the varying nature of particular obstructions between Node Bs and UEs, particularly tall buildings or dense woods). This phenomenon is well described in [anntena-saunders] and it has more importance in the coverage studies (because it affects directly the path-loss). The difference in performance terms between this symmetric and homogeneously distributed scenario and another more realistic scenario (i.e. scenario including clutter, DEM and traffic matrices based on clutter data) is going to be studied further in chapter 9 of this thesis.

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5.3 Defined Services and Traffic Mix

In Wines simulator, several services can be created based on the defined radio bearers in the TRIPS settings (as it was described in the previous chapter). For the purpose of this study, five services were defined because they correspond with the current UMTS services offered by Vodafone, although only four of them were considered in the study. The defined services were: -) Speech: circuit-switched symmetrical service (12.2 Kbps UL/DL) -) FTP: packet switched asymmetrical service (64 Kbps UL/384 Kbps DL) -) Web: packet switched asymmetrical service (64 Kbps UL/384 Kbps DL) -) Video-call: circuit-switched symmetrical service (64 Kbps UL/DL) -) Mobile TV: circuit-switched symmetrical service (64 Kbps UL/DL) The traffic mix, i.e. the percentage of usage of each service relative to the total usage of services, was defined as it is shown in the following Figure. This traffic mix was based on internal discussions within members of Vodafone in different countries and it is assumed to approximately reflect the current service mix (year 2005). As the users are becoming familiar with the new Data Services, this traffic mix is expected to change, as it is mentioned in [umts-forum6].
Traffic Mix [% ]

Service Voice Videocall Web Ftp MobileTv

percentage 77,00%
12,50

3,00

0,00

7,50% 12,50% 3,00% 0.00%

7,50

Voice Video calls www ftp Mobile Tv

77,00

Figure 14: Traffic Mix assumption

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Additionally, within each service, 2 kinds of users were assumed: Indoor Users (with an additional penetration loss of 18 dBs). Outdoor users.

The Indoor Users were defined as the 2/3 (66.7%) of the total of users of the corresponding service, and the Outdoor users were defined as the remaining 1/3 (33.3%). This was conveniently modeled in Wines defining two different User Terminals per each service (each one with different additional losses) and the different service portion (i.e. the corresponding 2/3 and 1/3) was modeled by creating two UE Profiles (indoor, outdoor) per each one of the defined services. About mobility types, all simulations were performed with pedestrian mobility type, except in the specific experiments dealing with the differences between the two mobility types pedestrian-vehicular (the experiments are specified in the simulation plan to be presented also in this chapter), a vehicular mobility type was applied to the Outdoor users.

5.4 Service Configuration

Continuing with the Service Configuration, each service has to be defined in terms of the following data:

5.4.1 Radio Bearer Properties The Radio Bearer is the service provided by the RLC for the transfer of user data between the UE and the UTRAN [21.905]. The Radio Bearer contains RLC parameters, MAC parameters, Transport Format Set(s) (TFS), physical channel parameters, and the information bit rate. Upon reception of a service request, the RNC performs a mapping of UMTS service parameters to Radio Bearer parameters called Radio Bearer Translation. According to the specifications, a UMTS service may be mapped to a signaling Radio Bearer or a combination of a (service-specific) Radio Bearer and a signaling Radio Bearer [34.108]. As Wines is focused on the performance of the user data transmission, it is dominated by modeling the non-signaling Radio Bearers which carry the user data. Nevertheless, signaling Radio Bearers associated with user data transmission are considered, e.g., for resource allocation. The non-signaling Radio Bearer configurations required to support the UMTS services are provided in the Trip Settings.

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Among the radio bearer properties, these have to be defined in the Service configuration Tab: The switching type: either circuit or packet switched The Transport Channel and the Maximum Data Rate (UL/DL): these have to be selected from the list of the Service Configuration Dialog. This list is based on the values defined on the TRIPS which can be also modified by the user of the simulator. The RLC Mode (Transparent, Acknowledged, Unacknowledged). For circuit-switched services, the transparent mode it is the only possible mode. This mode means that the system accepts the information coming from the transmitter and delivers it to the receiver in an unchanged form. For packet-switched services, Transparent, Acknowledged or unacknowledged mode are available.

5.4.2 Signal to Interference Ratio

Initial Target Eb/N0 UL: The target Eb/N0 value in uplink for the respective service. This value is used as target for the inner loop Power Control as long as no outer loop Power Control is applied. Initial Target Eb/No DL: The target Eb/No value in uplink for the respective service.

The values used for Downlink values for this study are based on a measurement study performed by Vodafone UK [Moret] and appear in the confidential appendix 3. For the Uplink values, an adaptation from the appendix 3 was used. The adaptation of values for Uplink had into account the following characteristic of the UL and DL characteristics: Target Eb/No Uplink < Target Eb/No Downlink (5-1)

This is given because the better reception techniques in the Node B (in Uplink, Tx = mobile, Rx = Node B), and it is in line with the assumptions presented in [Alcatel], [25.942] and Wines default values. If the target values for UL and DL need to be given in terms of the target SIR (as is the case of another Simulation Tools as Prismo), the target Eb/No can easily converted into a corresponding target SIR according to the following relationship: SIR [dB] = Eb/N0 [dB] - 10 * log10(3840 / (spreading factor * user data rate [kb/s])). (5-2)

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5.4.3 Service Prioritization

This value determines the order how services are processed by the Congestion Control and the Inter-Frequency Handover Control. This is a value between 1 and 15 where 1 gives the highest priority. The default service priority is 3. In this study the default value was used, in order to not interfere with the admission and congestion control implemented in the Ericsson P3 RRM algorithms.

5.4.4 Optional Semi-Dynamic Mode

This mode, applicable only to circuit-switched services, allows us to generate a traffic load (service arrival process) where the users are not moving but static. It is useful when one wants to test the soft capacity when an alreadyknown hard-capacity (e.g. voice users) is already present in the system. As it is also a simplification of the interference modeling, it also helps to reduce simulation times. In some simulations (as it is going to be explained in the simulation plan), this mode was used.

5.4.5 Physical Layer parameters

Decoding Limit Offset UL[dB]: The Eb/N0 threshold for correct (i.e. errorfree) detection of signaling messages in uplink for the respective service, given as an offset to the target Eb/N0. This value should be negative (in dB) such that a received data packet that meets the target Eb/N0 condition is detected correctly. The reference for this Decoding limit was the Capacity Study performed in Vodafone Germany by Peter Schneider [Schneider-2] Decoding Limit Offset DL[dB]: The Eb/N0 threshold for correct (i.e. errorfree) detection of signaling messages in downlink for the respective service. This value should be negative (in dB) such that a received data packet that meets the target Eb/N0 condition is detected correctly. The reference for this Decoding limit was the Capacity Study performed in Vodafone Germany by Peter Schneider [Schneider-2] Both definitions are in line with the satisfied user definition presented in [25.942] where a user is satisfied when the measured Eb/No of his connection is higher than a value equal to Eb/No target 0.5 dB. Otherwise, if it is lower than this limit, the user is considered in outage. Target BLER UL: It is the target BLER for the outer loop Power Control in uplink. The value ranges between 0 and 1.

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Target BLER DL: It is the target BLER for the outer loop Power Control in Downlink. The value ranges between 0 and 1. The target BLER levels in Downlink were based on the same document from Vodafone UK [Moret] where the DL Eb/No levels were based. For the Uplink direction the same values for Downlink were assumed.

5.4.6 Traffic Model parameters

The traffic model parameters were first defined according to the selection of the corresponding traffic models implemented in Wines according to the service. The following Table summarizes this first characterization step. A complete description of each one of the traffic models is provided in [Winestechref].

Service Speech Web FTP Video-call Mobile TV

Wines Traffic Model Speech/video WWW File Speech/video Speech/video

Table 2: Defined Services and Wines Traffic Models used Once the corresponding traffic model was selected, its parameterization was the outcome of discussions with colleagues in SFR (France). The agreed values are presented in the corresponding appendix 3, together with the description of the source taken to establish the value. Some of them were based on existing measurements from the GPRS network. One thing to mention here is the association that Wines makes between a Service and ASE values which is slightly different than the definition of ASE provided by Ericsson. ASE (Air Speech Equivalent) is a measure of air-interface utilization relative to the utilization of one Speech User (for instance, a connection using 3 ASEs in DL generates the same interference level as the one generated by three voice users). This definition is used by Ericsson within the Capacity Management monitors (ASE UL/DL utilization); the ASE usage applies hard

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limits to a cells and hence the networks capacity. Technically, it is calculated per radio link connection and defined according to [Ericsson-capacity] as: ASErl = (max. rate DCH)/(max. rate DCH speech) * ( AF DCH )/(AF DCH speech ) Where: ASErl is the air interface speech equivalent for a radio link Max.rate DCH is the expected maximum DCH rate for the radio link (DCH rate takes into account the overhead introduced by coding techniques and it doesnt corresponds directly to the information rate, for the corresponding DCH Rate per Radio Link see appendix 3) Max.rate DCH Speech is the expected maximum DCH rate for a speech radio link connection AFDCH is the activity factor of the considered DCH AFDCH,Speech is the activity factor of the voice service (assumed to be 0.67) (5-3)

The ASE for a radio connection is the sum of the ASE of all services on the radio connection. For example, the Speech radio connection consists of both the speech service (ASE=1) and the Dedicated Control Channel (DCCH) service (ASE=0.61), so the ASE for Speech becomes ASEspeech= 1 + 0.61 = 1.61. The estimation of ASEs in the cell for monitoring purposes is performed as follows: ASEDL= Sum rl (ASErl Dl) ASEUL= Sum rl (ASErl Where: ASEDL is the air interface speech equivalent in downlink for the cell ASErl link
DL UL/

( 5-4) nb radio links per RNC) (5-5)

is the air interface speech equivalent in downlink for a radio

ASEUL is the air interface speech equivalent in uplink for the cell ASErl ul is the air interface speech equivalent in uplink for a radio link nb radio links per RNC is the number of radio links within respective RNC

The number of ASEs for a radio link per cell in uplink is divided by the number of radio links involved in the connection. The principle is that the average uplink interference a UE creates in the respective cell, is proportional to the number of cells to which it is connected. This means that if a UE is connected to two cells, it only requires approximately half the ASEs in each cell, compared to using one cell.

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This is something that it is not modeled in Wines as the number of ASEs is associated to the Service, independent on the number of radio links (radio bearers). For the next release of Wines, Radioplan is going to change this approach by separating the service and the radio bearer control. This is going also to allow to model correctly the slow start mechanism defined in Ericsson, where the packet oriented connections start with the lowest-defined radio bearers for those connections (e.g. 64 Kbps) and progressively acquire better speed changing the bearer if and only if the radio conditions allow to do that (i.e. if there is enough soft capacity). In the current version of the simulator, the packet oriented connections still start asking for the highest possible data rate (which is often 384 kbps). This leads to a very high blocking rate for those bearers if the Ericsson parameter sf8Adm (which defines the maximum number of connections using SF-8, i.e. connections of 384 Kbps) is defined very low. In order to not affecting the simulation outcomes because of this non-realistic implementation, this parameter sf8Adm has been configured to its maximum value (8) which means no limitation, only the soft-capacity limit. Anyway, the results are going to be somewhat pessimistic for this kind of high-speed packet services because the mentioned Slow Start mechanism is not correctly implemented nowadays in Wines Simulator.

5.4.7 Traffic Matrices

A traffic matrix is location-based data of traffic density values. Each Service has a Traffic associated to it. The traffic density values are given in Erlang/km2. The traffic matrix assigns a traffic density value to each pixel or minimum area unit (area size configurable within the simulator). The traffic values in the traffic matrices are used for several purposes [WinesTechRef]: UE activation: New UEs are activated during a network simulation according to the spatial distribution of the relative traffic values in the traffic matrices. That is, UEs are created with higher probability at positions with higher traffic values. Targeted movement: Users in a dynamic network simulation move preferably along paths with higher traffic, if paths are defined (not in this study). The relative traffic values in the traffic matrices are used for this directly. Inter-arrival time of the service arrival process: The mean interarrival time of UE activations for a certain service is calculated from the given mean holding time (also known as the service time) of the service and the total traffic density (given through the traffic matrix).

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