Traffic engineering for wireless mobile networks supporting heterogeneous traffic

In this paper, we present a practical framework that can be used as a basis for dimensioning 3G systems and beyond that support heterogeneous traffic (voice and multirate data). We start by performing multiplexing simulations as a means to capture the temporal randomness for different traffic profiles, prior to using static system simulation. We present results of system simulation scenarios that demonstrate the importance of traffic characterization in capacity improvement. We illustrate the applicability of the simulation methods proposed here through a capacity study of a UMTS system. We confirm the results of the simplest scenario analytically and use cross-validation between two independent simulation tools for the more complex scenarios.