Analysis of hierarchical cellular networks with mobile base stations

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper, we develop and evaluate a hierarchical cellular architecture for totally mobile wireless networks (TMWNs). Extensive performance tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of a two‐tier system and compare its throughput, handoff blocking rate and new call success rate with those obtained by a one‐tier model. Our tests have shown that when the total number of channels is kept the same, the two‐tier system outperformed the one‐tier counterpart under all load conditions. Under the constraint of equal power consumption, the two‐tier system still achieved improvement over the one‐tier system, especially at light and medium load levels. The improvement of the two‐tier system over the one‐tier system was observed to diminish as the degree of randomness in the mobility model is reduced; scenarios where the one‐tier system outperforms the two‐tier system are given. Load balancing schemes based on the concept of reversible handoffs are introduced and their performance improvements are analyzed. Comparison results on the percentage of terminal coverage are presented. An analytical model to compute the new call and handoff blocking probabilities in TMWN is given and evaluated. The model extends the Markov chain approach previously used in hierarchical architectures with stationary base stations and uses a corrected derivation for the handoff blocking probability. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.