206549585
vGPRS: a mechanism for voice over GPRS
This paper proposes vGPRS, a voice over IP (VoIP) mechanism for a general packet radio service (GPRS) network. In this approach, a new network element called VoIP mobile switching center (VMSC) is introduced to replace standard GSM MSC. The vGPRS approach is implemented using standard H.323, GPRS, and GSM protocols. Thus, existing GPRS and H.323 network elements are not modified. Furthermore, both standard GSM and GPRS mobile stations can be used to receive vGPRS service, which need not be equipped with the VoIP (i.e., H.323) terminal capabilities.
2805042
A new random walk model for PCS networks
This paper proposes a new approach to simplify the two-dimensional random walk models capturing the movement of mobile users in personal communications services (PCS) networks. Analytical models are proposed for the new random walks. For a PCS network with hexagonal configuration, our approach reduces the states of the two-dimensional random walk from (3n/sup 2/+3n-5) to n(n+1)/2, where n is the layers of a cluster. For a mesh configuration, our approach reduces the states from (2n2-2n+1) to (n/sup 2/+2n+4)/4 if n is even and to (n/sup 2/+2n+5)/4 if n is odd. Simulation experiments are conducted to validate the analytical models. The results indicate that the errors between the analytical and simulation models are within 1%. Three applications (i.e., microcell/macrocell configuration, distance-based location update, and GPRS mobility management for data routing) are used to show how our new model can be used to investigate the performance of PCS networks.
16744149
Performance Analysis for Dual Band PCS Networks
In a dual band personal communications services (PCS) network, heavy traffic areas are covered by microcells which overlay macrocells. In such a network, microcells and macrocells utilize different frequency bands. We propose an analytic model to study the performance of a dual band PCS architecture. Our model assumes that a PCS subscriber has a general residence time distribution in a microcell and the macrocell residence time distribution is derived from the microcell residence time distribution. An iterative algorithm is used to compute the overflow traffic from a microcell to its overlaid macrocell. Then, the call incompletion probability is computed by a macrocell model based on the overflow traffic. Our study indicates that the variance of the microcell residence time distribution and the number of microcells covered by a macrocell have significant effects on the call incompletion probability.
16848330
A flexible graphical user interface for performance modeling
We identify three goals for the graphical user interface (GUI) of a network simulation environment: user friendliness, model re-usability, and application extensibility. We address the user friendliness issue by proposing a simple yet efficient approach to setup parameters for the simulation models. We address the application extensibility issue by a two-layer GUI architecture. The two layers are loosely-coupled, and the first layer can be easily replaced (without affecting the other components of the simulation environment). We address the model re-usability issue by subnetworks. Unlike most existing simulation packages where subnetwork is simply a method to group the nodes, the subnetwork construct in our approach is an integral part of the simulation environment (i.e., all operations for a basic node also apply to a subnetwork). The port concept is used to explicitly define the I/O relationship between a subnetwork and the outside world. Parameter dialog boxes are used to set up the parameters for a subnetwork conveniently. Finally, a simple stack mechanism is proposed to measure subnetwork-wide output statistics.<<ETX>>
22500122
Performance of hot billing mobile prepaid service
Abstract Prepaid service has become an important mobile application with rapid growth for subscription rate in the recent years. Implementation of prepaid service may generate large network traffic that significantly affects the performance of a mobile network. This paper studies the hot billing solution for prepaid service. We investigate how the amount of prepaid credit and the frequency of call detail record (CDR) transmissions affect network signaling and potential bad debt that a service provider may bear. Our study suggests that a prepaid service provider should encourage customers to buy large prepaid credits by giving them discounts. Furthermore, based on call traffic, an optimal CDR transmission frequency can be found by using our modeling technique.
5110930
A comparison study of the two-tier and the single-tier personal communications services systems
A two-tier PCS system integrates the high tier PCS system and the low tier PCS systems into a single system to provide the advantages of both tiers. Such a system is expected to provide better service (more available and more cost effective to the users) at the expense of the extra tier switching management. We compare the performance of the two-tier PCS system and the single low tier system in two aspects: the registration traffic and the service availability. Because of the tier management, the two-tier system generates more registration traffic than the single low tier system. Under the range of the input parameters in our study, we show that the two-tier system generates less than 10% extra registration traffic than the single low tier system in most cases and generates less than 20% registration traffic in the worst cases. It is clear that for the service availability, the two-tier system is better than the single one tier system. We also study the probability that a call is forced terminated in the single low tier system because the low tier becomes unavailable during the call (such a call can be continued in the two-tier system).
12722290
A survey and measurement-based comparison of bandwidth management techniques
This article gives a brief tutorial for bandwidth management systems; a survey of the techniques used by eight real-world systems, such as class-based queuing (CBQ), per-flow queuing (PFQ), random early detection (RED), and TCP rate control (TCR); a compact testbed with a set of methodologies to differentiate the employed techniques; and a detailed black-box evaluation. The tutorial describes the needs for the three types of policy rules: class-based bandwidth limitation, session-bandwidth guarantee, and inter/intra-class bandwidth borrowing. The survey portion investigates how the eight chosen commercial/open-source real systems enforce the three policy types. To evaluate the techniques, the designed testbed emulates real-life Internet conditions, such as many simultaneous sessions from different IPs/ports, controllable wide area network (WAN) delay and packet loss rate for each session, and different TCP source implementations. The performance metrics include accuracy of bandwidth management, fairness among sessions, robustness under Internet packet losses and different operating systems, inter/intra-class bandwidth borrowing, and voice over IP (VoIP) quality. The black-box test results demonstrate that (1) only the combination of CBQ+PFQ+TCR can solve the most difficult scenario (multiple sessions competing for the narrow 20kb/s class); (2) the TCR approach may degrade the goodput, fairness, and compatibility even under slight packet loss rates (0.5 percent); (3) without PFQ, TCR and RED have limited ability to isolate the sessions (especially for RED); (4) the G.729 VoIP quality over a 125kb/s access link becomes good only after exercising MSS-clamping to shrink the packet size of the background traffic down to 256 byte.
27186635
Register minimization beyond sharing among variables
Traditionally, it is assumed that every variable in the input HDL (hardware description language) behavioral description needs to be held in a register; a register can be shared by multiple variables if they have mutually disjointed lifetime intervals. This approach has been shown effective for signal-flow-like computations such as various DSP algorithms. However, the same is not true for the synthesis of control-dominated circuits, which usually have variables of different bit-width as well as very long lifetime. To go beyond register minimization by lifetime-analysis-based sharing, we propose holding some variables in the state registers, some signal nets, some unclocked sequential networks or a combination of above. We identify the conditions in which the substitution is feasible. We have implemented the proposed method in a software program called VReg. Experimental results have demonstrated that VReg minimizes the number of registers more effectively than the lifetime-analysis-based approach does. Better register area minimization also generally leads to faster designs.
32261160
Channel assignment for GSM half-rate and full-rate traffic
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) supports full-rate and half-rate calls. In this paper, we propose analytical and simulation models to study the performance of four channel assignment schemes for GSM half-rate and full-rate traffic. Our study indicates that among the four schemes, the repacking scheme has the best performance for mixing half-rate and full-rate traffic. We also observe that good performance is expected if the standard derivation of the cell residence time for a mobile station is large.
18540245
Array allocation taking into account SDRAM characteristics
Multimedia, image processing and other signal processing applications often involve data stored in large arrays. Due to chip area limitation, arrays are typically assigned to off-chip memories, such as DRAM. This being the case, we try to optimize off-chip memory accesses to improve performance. We take the characteristics of the current mainstream SDRAM memory into account. We propose an algorithm to allocate arrays to different banks to increase the probability of utilizing SDRAM's multi-bank characteristic. Experimental results show significant improvement over traditional approaches.
27475892
SILK: a simulated evolution router
The authors present a rip-up-and-rerouter based on a matrix representation scheme and simulated evolution technique for solving detailed routing problems in VLSI layout. The status of the routing region is represented as a matrix. Rip-up and reroute operations are emulated as matrix subtractions and additions, respectively. The quality of a routing result can be measured by a few simple matrix operations on the matrix. A rip-up and reroute switch-box/channel router, called SILK, using a simulated evolution technique has been implemented based on this representation alone. Experimental results showed that SILK, when solving all the benchmarks from the literature, outperformed WEAVER, the most successful switch-box router to date, in both quality and speed aspects. >