Application-perceived throughput process in wireless systems

Motivated by the central role and the importance of network throughput for the performance of net-worked applications and thus for user experience, this paper investigates the process of user-perceived throughput. This throughput is measured on rather small time scales and interpreted with aid of summary statistics, histograms and autocorrelation coefficients. The results including GPRS, UMTS and WLAN measurements reveal a clear influence of the network, seen from variations of application-perceived throughput on the one-second time scale, which has to be considered when choosing the right kind of network for a specific task. The different statistical metrics considered will later be used in our research to maintain the QoS of the service decided by the user. While theoretical throughputs are yielded as expected in UMTS, both GPRS and WLAN do not reach the promised throughput values.