GPRS measurement methodologies and performance characterization for the railway environment

Author

Michel, Dirk ; Ramasarma, Nathan

Author_Institution

Network Planning & Technol., Bechtel Telecommun., London, UK

Volume

3

fYear

2005

fDate

13-17 March 2005

Firstpage

1670

Abstract

The railway environment presents a unique challenge for cellular radio coverage. European cellular operators, among others, have realized the potential of the mobile user on railways and have constantly sought to improve the performance of cellular networks to accommodate current and next generation wireless services. Improving cellular coverage and services on railways is becoming increasingly important, considering the serious efforts of various European nations to boost public rail usage. However, performance limitations that certain environments such as railways might place on current technologies such as 2.5G general packet radio service (GPRS) have yet to be accurately verified. This paper highlights operational challenges and introduces strategies for defining, measuring and verifying GPRS key performance indicators (KPIs) on railways, describes manual and automated field-testing concepts, and presents selected KPI results from a trial campaign conducted in the UK.

Keywords

cellular radio; mobility management (mobile radio); packet radio networks; railways; 2.5G general packet radio service; GPRS measurement methodologies; GPRS mobility management; GPRS throughput; automated field testing; cellular radio coverage; key performance indicators; manual field testing; network delay; railway environment; Access protocols; Base stations; GSM; Ground penetrating radar; Land mobile radio cellular systems; Media Access Protocol; Packet radio networks; Rail transportation; Technology planning; Throughput;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2005 IEEE

ISSN

1525-3511

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8966-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WCNC.2005.1424764

Filename

1424764