Traffic Engineering Concepts for Cellular Packet Radio Networks with Quality of Service Support

Cellular packet radio networks are presently introduced and further developed to support mobile Multimedia applications and mobile Internet access. The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), the packet services of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), are dominant standards for packet data support in evolved second-generation cellular systems.

This thesis presents traffic engineering concepts for cellular packet radio networks that are applied but not limited to the standards GPRS and EGPRS and can be integrated into the radio interface capacity planning process. They are based on a comprehensive performance evaluation of Internet and Multimedia applications for the relevant cell scenarios, system parameter settings and protocol options that are expected for the evolution of GPRS and EGPRS networks. Additionally, optimized algorithms for traffic management and quality of sendee management, comprising connection admission control as well as scheduling, are developed. Their performance is evaluated and compared to existing implementations. From the traffic performance analysis, based on the existing and optimized system models, traffic engineering rules are derived. They can be used for quantitative radio interface dimensioning by network operators, equipment vendors or system integrators. Examples for the application of the traffic engineering rules are presented for GPRS evolution scenarios and an EGPRS introduction scenario. While the examples are based on the existing standards GPRS and EGPRS, the concepts developed in this thesis are valid for all packet radio networks.