Building a tested emulating cellular networks

: design, implementation, cross-validation and exploitation of a real-time framework to evaluate QoS and QoE in the UTRAN

Abstract

The evolution of mobile communications and the Internet has lead to the third generation of cellular networks (3G), known as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). With the launch of this new generation of mobile communication, users are now truly able to access the Internet from mobile terminals, allowing them to enjoy a large variety of added value services. In this context, UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) modelling and traffic characterisation are important steps of the research. The goal of this project has been to provide a representative Linux-based testbed which emulates a real UTRAN segment supporting typical IPv6 traffic samples based on significant statistical properties. This gives a tool able to emulate real UTRAN behaviours with more realism and less theoretical hypotheses than time- and event-driven network simulators and less costs than a real UTRAN deployment. The main objective of this thesis is to demonstrate through comparison of results from the open literature, that a testbed consisting of a dozen personal computers and open source software is able to realistically emulate the UTRAN. Based on this testbed infrastructure, the second objective of this project is to improve Radio Resource Management (RRM), Call Admission Control (CAC) and/or scheduling algorithms in order to fulfil the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for upcoming applications and services, and Quality of Experience (QoE) of users.

Date of Award	17 Mar 2008
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	Laurent Schumacher (Supervisor), Jean-Marie Jacquet (Jury), Vincent Englebert (Jury), Chris BLONDIA (Jury), Troels BUNDGAARD Sorensen (Jury) & Stefaan ENGELS (Jury)