Performance analysis of 3G system considering potential influence on control channels caused by bursty data traffic

Due to fast proliferation of smart phones, today mobile data traffic has some new characteristics such as small-size data packets, short-duration connections and long-time activities. These characteristics produce massive signaling in control channel but little throughput in traffic channel and may cause some serious problems in mobile networks. In recent years, performance of traffic channel in 3G mobile systems is discussed widely. However, little if not none of previous research involves both control channel and traffic channel considering the influence caused by bursty data traffic. This paper sets a typical 3G system, EVDO Rev. A which has already incurred some problems in operation, as an example and evaluates its performance considering interactive signaling in control channel brought by mobile data traffic. In our simulation, we use new data traces which match with mobile data traffic better. Our research presents results demonstrating that the performance of network is affected by many aspects including traffic type, number of users, dormancy timer thresholds and so on. The paper provides an instructive method to not only future performance research of other 3G systems, but 4G systems´ research as well.