The Uplink Capacity Evaluation of Wireless Networks: Spectral Analysis Approach

Abstract

In this paper we study the capacity of wireless cellular network, in particular the uplink of WCDMA system by using the two dimensional continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC) technique. Considering two types of calls: real-time (RT) calls that characterized by a quasi fixed transmission rate, and best-effort (BE) calls which do not require strict demand but need some reliability conditions. We develop an approach based on the spectral analysis for evaluating the cell capacity. We explicitly obtain the simultaneous distribution of the number of RT connections and the number of BE connections in the steady-state. This analysis allows us to simplify the computation of the performance measures including expected delay and throughput of BE traffic. These performances are obtained explicitly in both cases (finite and infinite) of BE calls as function of system parameters like arrival rate of BE and RT calls, service rate of BE and RT calls. These results allow the operator to evaluate the cell capacity by varying these parameters independently of the number of BE calls according to its policy to manage the network. Note that this analysis can be applied to various systems such as WiMAX/HSPA, and for both uplink and downlink scenarios, so our spectral analysis approach is not only applicable to the uplink of WCDMA system. We further propose some CAC (Call admission control) policies for BE traffic. We finally conclude this work by some numerical and simulation results. The simulation results obtained by the network simulator (NS2) are closely to the numerical results of our analytical results which validate our theoretical model.