Distributed simulation of large-scale PCS networks

There has been rapid growth an demand for mobile communications over the past few years that has led to intensive research and development of complex PCS (personal communication service) networks. Capacity planning and performance modeling are necessary to maintain a high quality of service to the mobile subscriber while minimizing the cost. Simulation is widely used in such studies, however, because these models are extremely time consuming to execute, only small-scale PCS networks have previously been simulated. In this paper, we examine the use of the Time Warp distributed simulation mechanism in simulating large scale (1024 or more cells) PCS networks. An object-oriented, distributed, discrete event simulator using Time Warp has been developed, and initial performance measurements completed. Speedups in the range of 2.8 to 7.8 using 8 Unix workstations have been obtained, enabling simulation runs that require 20 hours on a single workstation to be completed in only 3.5 hours