Modeling frame synchronization for UMTS high-speed downlink packet access

Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specification TR 25.950 proposed high-speed downlink packet access for the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). In this mechanism, an active set of cells is defined for every user equipment (UE) communication session. The cell with the best wireless link quality (called the serving cell) in the active set is selected for communication with the UE. When the wireless link quality of the old serving cell degrades below some threshold, a new serving cell in the active set is selected to continue the communication session. Our previous work proposed a high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) overflow control scheme with four frame synchronization algorithms to switch the serving cell, and formally proved the correctness of the scheme. We propose an analytic model to investigate the performance of these frame synchronization algorithms, and show how the user movement patterns affect the control message delivery costs of these algorithms.