Impact of modelling assumptions in event-driven software simulation tools for the performance evaluation of cellular mobile systems

This paper addresses the problem of comparing results obtained by means of different software tools when evaluating the radio access capacity and the system performance of a cellular mobile communication system. Particularly, an analysis of the impact on the final results of modelling and working assumptions independent of radio link control aspects is performed. Main focuses are mobility modelling, path loss and shadowing modelling, as well as measurement reporting criteria and their interactions with different sets of radio network functions. The case study presented here deals with a TDMA system (GSM-like). The study is done by comparing the results obtained for the same reference scenario by two event-driven system simulation software tools, developed internally by CSELT and CNET. Nevertheless, since the topics analysed are common to any system simulation activity, the conclusions drawn here can be easily extended to a more general context. Therefore, from these results, useful guidelines for building simulation tools or comparing outputs can be derived