Modeling and Simulation of Wireless Pa ket Erasure Channels G unther Liebl, Thomas Sto khammer1, and Frank Burkert2

Abstra t We will present a new model for wireless pa ket erasure hannels, whi h an be used for both theoreti al analysis and real-time simulation of network proto ol performan e. The orrelation between su essive pa ket losses will be des ribed by a higher-order Markov pro ess, whi h an be transformed into an equivalent

rstorder Markov hain, su h that all major performan e measures an be derived from the model. Sin e our approa h belongs to the lass of generative dis rete hannel models, it an also be used as a sto hasti sour e to reprodu e an in

nite sequen e of erasure indi ator values with desired sto hasti properties. Thus, it an be easily implemented into network simulation environments in terms of a lossy l ink element, where both short-term and long-term fading on the mobile radio link are taken into a ount separately. Finally, we will show some modeling results for a GSM GPRS system, whi h is a pa ket-oriented transmission servi e to be laun hed in Europe in spring 2000. In addition, we will demonstrate the ee ts of dierent pa ket sizes and hannel oding rates on end-to-end throughput. I. Introdu tion IN future ellular networks, pa ket-oriented transmission servi es will play a major role, sin e they provide an e ient means to adapt to the highly varying data rate of dierent multimedia appli ations. One possible s enario is omprised of a totally heterogeneous network environment, where the urrent Internet serves as the ba kbone, and the wireless links provide a ess points for mobile users. However, ompared to the benign hannel hara teristi s of wire-line broadband networks, radio links suer from severe distortions due to fading, noise, and inte rferen e. Hen e, despite many advan es in hannel oding and equalization over the last years, the residual bit error rate is still a ru ial fa tor: if only one single bit is orrupt, the whole pa ket must be de lared lost. This results in a signi

antly higher pa ket erasure rate than on today's Internet, where loss ow. Sin is mainly only due to buer over e all ommon network proto ols like TCP or UDP have been optimized with respe t to link ongestion, they are extremely sensitive to a signi

ant in rease in pa ket loss. Hen e, a sto hasti model is needed to analyze the detrimental ee ts of wireless links on end-to-end pa ket transmission in heterogeneous network environments. In addition to theoreti al results, real-time system behavior has to be examined with respe t to a parti ular setting of timers and buer sizes of the various network proto ols. In ontrast to already 1Institute for Communi ations Engineering, Muni h University of Te hnology, Ar isstr. 21, 80290 Muni h, Germany, email:fliebl,tomg LNT.EI.TUM.DE 2Siemens AG { Corporate Te hnology ZT IK 2, 80730 Muni h, Germany, email: Frank.Burkert M hP.Siemens.DE

existing approa hes, we have developed a new model whi h an be implemented into a network simulation environment. We will start with a very general des ription of pa ket erasure hannels in se tion II, where we will also de

ne all the ne essary notation. Se tion III ontains the various steps in developing our model using the idea of higher-order Markov pro esses and their equivalent

rst-order Markov hain. In se tion IV, we will explain why our model is well-suited for integration into exist ing network simulation environments, and show one possible implementation strategy. After a short introdu tion to GSM GPRS (se tion V) we will present some performan e results for a GSM GPRS system in se tion VI to prove the appli ability of the proposed model. II. General Des ription of a Pa ket Erasure Channel In the following, our pa ket erasure hannel of interest shall ontain all the omponents of an arbitrary mobile radio system, i.e. logi al hannel stru ture, hannel oding and modulation s hemes at the transmitter, demodulation and dete tion methods at the re eiver, and the a tual hara teristi s of the underlying physi al transmission hannel, as depi ted in Fig. 1. The input to the hannel is assumed to be a sequen e of pa kets of

xed length, depending on the segmentation and reassembly pro edure. At the output, a delayed version of the input sequen e is re eived, in whi h all lost pa kets are repla ed by an erasure indi ator. Network Network - Segmentation wireless link (noise, interference, fading) - Segmentation - (De-)Interleaver - Channel Codec - Equalization - Mod-/Demodulation - Frequency Hopping Mobile Host packet erasure channel - (De-)Interleaver - Channel Codec - Equalization - Mod-/Demodulation - Frequency Hopping Base Station Fig. 1. Elements of a pa ket erasure hannel. The re eption of su essive pa kets an therefore be des ribed by a binary dis rete-time sto hasti pro ess, i.e. a family of binary random variables (Ei; i 2 I), where I is the denume rable set of integers, and i denotes the position of a pa ket in a transmission sequen e. Hen e, the sequen e e = : : : e..1; e0; e1 : : : represents a parti ular realization of the erasure pro ess, as shown in Fig. 2. The binary random variable Ei is often alled an erasure indi ator variable, and takes on a value

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 ... ... ... pa ket stream pa ket #i ei Fig. 2. Realization of a pa ket erasure pro ess. ei in f0; 1g a ording to the following rule: ei :=8<: 0 : pa ket #i orre tly re eived 1 : pa ket #i lost : (1) In general, the probability distribution of the random variable Ei depends on an in

nite number of past events, due to the orrelated fading pro ess on typi al mobile radio hannels. However, in most pra ti al ases, only a

nite number of previous erasure events, say Ei..1 = ei..1;Ei..2 = ei..2; : : : ;Ei.. = ei.., have to be taken into a ount. Then, we usually speak of a hannel of memory length 0. If we furthermore assume our pa ket erasure pro ess to be both stationary and ergodi , it an be ompletely des ribed via its onditional probability mass fun tion (PMF): pE = Pr(Ei = ei j Ei..1 = ei..1; : : : ;Ei.. = ei..) 8i 2 I: (2) In the following, we will show how Eq. 2 an be rewritten in terms of the state transitions of a Markov hain, thus enabling us to apply all the well-known results in this

eld to our problem of modeling pa ket erasure hannels. III. Proposed Model: The Markov Erasure Channel (MEC) In this se tion, we will develop a Markov model for our orrelated pa ket erasure pro ess of memory order , whi h has an extended state spa e and a orresponding mapping fun tion between erasure indi ator variables and states. For sake of ompa tness, only the major ideas of the approa h are mentioned. For a more detailed treatment of this topi , in luding all relevant proofs, the reader is referred to [3.. A. The Higher-order Markov Erasure Pro ess Let us de

ne a higher-order stationary and ergodi Markov pro ess with binary state spa e SB = f0; 1g, whi h has a memory of order . Thus, the probability of making a transition from state u 2 SB to state v 2 SB also depends on ( .. 1) previous states. There exist s now a set of jSBj(..1) onditional probabilities for des ribing su h a transition. Due to the assumed stationarity of our pro ess, the same set holds for all possible sequen e indi es i 2 I, and is denoted by P u;v = fPr(Si = v j Si..1 = u; Si..2 = si..2; : : : ; Si.. = si..)g ; (3)

with s(i..2); : : : ; s(i..) 2 SB. Given the following (deterministi ) mapping between erasure indi ator values and states ei := (si) =8<: 0 ; if si = 0 1 ; if si = 1 ; (4) we an rewrite Eq. 3 in terms of erasure indi ator variables Ej = (Sj) as P u;v = fPr(Ei = v j Ei..1 = u;Ei..2 = ei..2; : : : ;Ei.. = ei..)g : (5) Based on the above de

nition of a higher-order Markov erasure pro ess, we will now try to

nd an equivalent

rst-order Markov hain, su h that the omputation of Eq. 2 only involves the two su essive states in the sequen e. B. The Equivalent First-order Markov Chain We will start by de

ning a

rst-order stationary and ergodi Markov hain with an extended state spa e S = f0; 1; : : : ; 2 ..1g. The probability of making a transition from state u 2 S to state v 2 S here only depends on these two states, and an be written as Pu;v := Pr(Si = v j Si..1 = u): (6) If we furthermore apply the following modi

ed (deterministi ) mapping between erasure indi ator values and states ei := (si) = 8<: 0 ; if si is even 1 ; if si is odd ; (7) it an be proved [3., that the above ombination results in the same sto hasti properties as the previously de

ned higher-order Markov erasure pro ess. Sin e the inverse relationship to Eq. 7 is given by si := ..1 X j=0 ei..j 2j ; (8) the onditional PMF of Eq. 2 an be represented in terms of a state transition probability: Pr(Ei = ei j Ei..1 = ei..1; : : : ;Ei.. = ei..) = Pr0 Si = ..1 X j=0 ei..j 2j j Si..1 = ..1 X j=0 ei..1..j 2j1A : (9) C. Simplest Non-trivial Example: Markov Erasure Channel of Order 2 We will illustrate the idea behind our proposed model by giving a simple example . Let us onsider a Markov erasure hannel with a total of four states. Fig. 3 shows a sample sequen e of erasure indi ator values and the respe tive state transition diagram of the equivalent

rst-order Markov hain. Suppose the

rst pa ket has been re eived orre tly, whereas the se ond has been lost, i.e the hannel is urrently in state 1. With probability p1;2, it will swit h into state 2 during the

0 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 2 3 p1;2 p2;0 p2;1 p3;2 p1;3 p3;3 p2;0 p0;1 p0;0 p1;2 Fig. 3. Sample sequen e and state transition diagram of the equivalent

rst-order Markov hain for a Markov erasure hannel of memory order = 2. next transmission, whi h results in the third pa ket being orre tly re eived. If the hannel then swit hes into state 0 with probability p2;0, the fourth pa ket will also pass un-erased. Instead of the state transition diagram, we an also use the transition matrix of the underlying

rst-order Markov hain to des ribe the sto hasti properties of the Markov erasure hannel: P = 0BBBBBB p0;0 p0;1 0 0 0 0 p1;2 p1;3 p2;0 p2;1 0 0 0 0 p3;2 p3;3 1CCCCCCA : (10) As we an easily realize, there are only two entries in ea h row, orresponding to the two possible transitions starting in ea h state. This is due to the binary nature of the erasure pro ess and the deterministi mapping between states and erasure indi ator variables, and therefore holds for any 2. memory order From the above example, two aspe ts of our proposed model an already be observed: Given a su iently long sequen e of measured erasure indi ator values for a spe i

mobile radio link, we are able to parameterize the orresponding Markov model of desired memory order, i.e. ompute an approximation for the a tual transition probabilities by using the inverse relationship of Eq. 8. On e we have set up all (possibly) nonzero entries in the transition matrix, we an reprodu e an in

nite sequen e of erasure indi ator values by y ling through the state transition diagram and using Eq. 7.

IV. A real-time network simulation environment featuring a lossy wireless link When implementing our real-time network simulation environment, we made use of a n existing shareware tool developed by UC Berkeley, the soalled NS version 2.1b5 [1.. It is an obje t-oriented simulation tool, for whi h various ommon proto ol elements like agents, queues, or transmission links already exist in a basi version, su h that we do not have to worry about how to pass on pa kets between entities, or perform syn hronization between transmitter and re eiver parts. One major bene

t of NS is the full support of almost any possible version of IP-based tra , e.g. proto ols like TCP and UDP. Sin e spring 1999, there also exists a real-time enhan ement alled NSE, whi h provides a simple means to investigate intera tive proto ol behavior: Via regular network interfa e ards, external IP-tra from remote hosts an be fed into a virtual simulation s enario, where single pa kets an be dropped or delayed, before they are passed ba k onto the

xed network. Thus, it is possible to add a virtual wireless link at any point in a heterogeneous network, and anal yze end-to-end performan e of ommon transmission proto ols. A. A new Lossy Link Element Based on the MEC Model Fig. 4 shows a simple stru ture for an end-to-end link in the virtual network. The agents at both sides are usually modi

ed with respe t to our desired system of interest, whi h will be des ribed later on. The queue is usually a

xed element of every transmission link in NS, and is responsible for orre tly spa ed pa ket transmission a ording to the target bit rate and delay set for the link. The NS spe i

ation already in ludes a general pro edure for integrating lossy link behavior Model Agent Agent Delay Queue Link: Bit Rate/ Erasure Fig. 4. Proposal for a lossy link element. into virtual networks. A ording to an underlying sto hasti sour e, a binary random variable is produ ed whenever a pa ket is transmitted over the link. If its value is \1", the pa ket is marked as lost, and the re eiving agent an exa tly tell whi h pa kets have to be dropped. But this me hanism exa tly orresponds to our previous de

nition of erasure indi ator values in se tion II. As we have mentioned in se tion III, our proposed MEC model has the property of being able to reprodu e a (possibly) in

nite sequen e of erasure indi ator values, whi h has approximately the same sto hasti hara teristi s as the measured sequen e on a wireless link. Hen e, our approa h belongs to the lass of generative hannel models [2., based on whi h it is fairly easy to onstru t

a new sto hasti sour e with desired properties. B. Modeling of Dierent Fading Chara teristi s An important new aspe t of our simulation environment is the lear distin tion between dierent fading hara teristi s. We onsider an interferen e-limited system, where the in uen e of short-term fading is in luded in the statisti al properties of the physi al hannel. Hen e, for ea h target arrierto-interferen e{ratio (C=I), we an set up a orresponding sto hasti des ription of the erasure pro ess. To take into a ount the long-term variations in the re eived signal, we an dynami ally swit h our model parameters with respe t to measured C=I-pro

les during a simulation run. Thus, the movement of a mobile terminal through a natural environment an be analyzed. V. GSM General Pa ket Radio Servi e (GPRS) Against the ba kground of the growth of both Internet and ellular phone users there is an evident need for an e ient wireless a ess to pa ket swit hed data networks. Current so{ alled 2nd generation mobile ommuni ation systems, e.g. GSM, are not able to serve this purpose. They have been designed on base of a ir uit swit hed radio transmission for narrow band spee h ommuni ations. This results in two major drawba ks for data transmission. Firstly, the available bandwidth per user is mu h too small to allow higher data rates and, se ondly, data tra in pa ket swit hed networks, e.g. the Internet, is bursty by nature. Conveying bursty tra over a ir uit swit hed bearer results in a highly ine ient utilization of the available radio hannels and auses unreasonable high osts for the user. Therefore, the Spe ial Mobile Group (SMG) within the ETSI standardization body laun hed in GSM phase 2+ the development of an e ient ellular pa ket data servi e. At the end of 1998, ETSI spe i

ed GPRS as a new bearer servi e for GSM networks to improve and simplify wireless a ess to pa ket data networks. It is build atop of the regular GSM proto ol sta k to fa ilitate a low omplex and easy integration into already established GSM systems. In the following, we will give a brief overview of the extended system ar hite ture of a GSM GPRS system, where we will solely fo us on the air interfa e, i.e. we will not onsider session setup and tear down or the delivery and routing of pa kets between mobile stations and external pa ket data networks (e.g the Internet). Our des riptions are mainly based on [4.[5.. A. The GPRS Proto ol Sta k The basi idea behind the development of the GPRS spe i

ation was to ensure the on urrent existen e of urrent voi e transfer with future high-rate pa ket data transfer in ommon GSM networks. Thus, the GPRS proto ol an be onsidered as a set of extensions of the existing GSM proto ol sta k. One important extension is related to hannel allo ation. In GRPS, a mobile station (MS) may use multiple time slots of the same TDMA frame. The hannel allo ation is very

PH User data Segment Segment Segment Segment Segment Info BH Info BCS Tail Convolutional Encoding FH Network layer SNDCP layer SNDCP layer LLC layer LLC layer RLC/MAC layer RLC/MAC layer Physical layer Packet (N-PDU) RLC-block LLC-frame ... ... FH: Frame header PH: Packet header BH: Block header FCS: Frame check sequence BCS: Block check sequence FCS 456 Fig. 5. Hierar hi al frame stru ture and proto ol sta k of GSM GPRS. fast andThe base station subsystem (BSS) assigns the available resour exible. es to the mobile stations a ording to a soalled apa ity-on-demand prin iple, i.e. multiple users in a ell share a ommon physi al hannel. The allo ation of the time slots may dier from TDMA frame to TDMA frame. This enables the system to allo ate a hannel only when either the mobile station or the BBS needs to send data pa kets. Moreover, downlink and uplink hannels are assigned independently (asymmetri transmission). Hen e, for bursty tra this results in a very e ient usage of the valuable resour

e bandwidth. The GPRS proto ol sta k an be gathered from Fig. 5. On top of the network layer, any pa ket data proto ol an be applied. Most usually this will be the IP Proto ol. The Subnetwork Dependent Convergen e Proto ol (SNDCP) adapts the upper layer proto ols to the fun tionality of the underlying GRPS layers. It performs segmentation and reassembly of long user data pa kets and provides means for header ompression and data en ryption on the mobile link to ensure priva y of user ommuni ation. The data link layer en ompasses three sublayers. Logi al Link Control (LLC) is used to establish a logi al link between MS and BBS and is based on LAPD, whi h is also part of the ommon GSM proto ol sta k. It supports point-to-point as well as point-to-multipoint onne tions. Ba kward error prote tion is provided in form of a Go-ba k-N retransmission proto ol. The Radio Link Control (RLC) layer performs segmentation of the LLC pa ket data units (PDUs) into short blo ks of

xed length a ording to one of the hannel oding s hemes des ribed in subse tion V-B. A blo k he k sequen e is appended (in dependen e on the applied oding s heme this is either a Fire ode or a CRC ode), whi h allows in ombination with sequen e numbering the dete tion of erroneous or lost pa kets. In addition, RLC provides an optional Automati Request (ARQ) proto ol to a hieve a reliable data transfer when needed. The Medium A ess Control (MAC) sublayer performs multiplexing of user data and signaling information.

TABLE I Coding s hemes defined for GPRS. Code Payload BCS Preod. Tail Cod. Pun t. Data rate rate USF bits bits bits (kbits/s) CS-1 1/2 181 40 3 4 456 0 9.05 CS-2 2/3 268 16 6 4 588 132 13.4 CS-3 3/4 312 16 6 4 676 220 15.6 CS-4 1 428 16 12 0 456 0 21.4 The physi al layer onsists of two sublayers. The Physi al Link Layer (PLL) provides means of forward error orre tion (FEC) whi h will be des ribed in more detail later. The Radio Frequen y Layer (RFL) equals the one spe i

ed for GSM. Fig. 5 also depi ts the hierar hi al frame stru ture and the segmentation/reassembly a ording to the GRPS proto ol sta k as des ribed above. B. Channel Coding S hemes for GSM GPRS The purpose of hannel oding is to prote t the transmitted data against errors. For the original full-rate GSM tra hannel for spee h, the output bits of the spee h en oder are expanded to a total of 456 oded bits by use of a memory 4 rate 1/2 onvolutional ode. The en oded bits are subsequently blo k-diagonally interleaved and mapped onto 8 su essive radio bursts. In GPRS, four dierent oding s hemes (CS) have been de

ned ea h delivering 456 bits, sin e the stru ture of the underlying interleaver and radio bursts have not been hanged ompared to GSM. A pro edure alled link adaptation an be applied to dynami ally swit h between the CS after every RLC blo k. This allows to adapt the level of error prote tion to the hannel hara teristi s. Tab. I details the parameters of the four CS, where data rate denotes the rate t hat is available per GSM time slot.The onvolutional ode is the same ode as used in the original GSM system. That is, if CS-4 is applied and a single user an use all 8 time slots of a TDMA frame, then the maximum data rate is 171.2 kbit/s. It is important to note that the term payload in this ontext does not denote the amount of user data that an be mapped onto one RLC blo k, but the sum of the RLC header and the RLC data

eld as shown in Fig. 6. Thus, for throughput al ulations, we have later to take into a ount the respe tive overhead. VI. Results In order to verify our new modeling on ept for pa ket erasure hannels we applied it to the GSM GPRS system. We will onsider the pa ket transmission at the RLC layer. A RLC PDU is de lared as lost (erasure), when the blo k he k sequen e indi ates an residual error in the re eived pa ket. Sin e there exits no analyti al means of des ribing the pa ket erasure pro ess at

RLC data block USF T RLC head. BCS MAC header Block check sequence PC RLC data Payload USF: Uplink State Flag T: Type Indicator PC: Power Control Fig. 6. Stru ture of a RLC PDU ontaining user data. this level, the parameterization of the MEC depends on empiri al data that an be gathered either by measurements or simulations of the GPRS system. Thus, the parameterization in volves three steps. Firstly, we generate a su iently long sequen e of erasure indi ator values (su h that the assumption of ergodi ity is valid) by simulation of the radio link. Then, we hoose the memory order for the Markov erasure pro ess and set up the state transition diagram. Finally, by analysis of the generated erasure indi ator sequen e we approximate the transition probabilities of the MEC a ording to se tion III. It is important to note that this approa h requires a very long sequen e of erasure indi ator values, sin e it is impossible to determine all transition probabilities for an arbitrary memory order from a

nite set of empiri al data. Furthermore, for very small transition probabilities, the statisti al un ertainty is very high due to the few events that an a tually be found in the simulated sample sequen e. Note that in reasing the memory order results only in a better approximation of the model, if the data set is su iently long. For our simulation of the radio link, we have hosen the following s enario. The fading model for the hannel is based on COST TU03, i.e. we onsider a typi al urban environment with a pedestrian at a speed of 3 km/h. Frequen y hopping after ea h TDMA frame is enabled and assumed to be ideal and all eight time slots are o upied by a single GPRS user. Further, we assume an interferen e limited system, where the re eived arrier signal is only disturbed by one ohannel interferer in a distant ell. The state of the mobile radio hannel an therefore be denoted by the a tual arrierto-interferen e ratio (C/I) at the re eiver. We will verify the validity of our model by means of erasure and erasure free ru n distributions. An erasure run of length l is a sequen e of l su essive erasures fei = 1 j i = 1; : : : ; lg, whi h is delimited by both e0 = 0 and el+1 = 0, i.e. the event f0; 1l ; 0g. Our statis ti of interest is the soalled erasure run distribution (ERD), whi h is the probability that an erasure run is longer than l pa kets. A ording to the same on ept an erasure-free run of length lf is de

ned as a sequen e of lf su essive non-erasures fei = 0 j i = 1; : : : ; lf g, whi h is delimited by both e0 = 1 and elf+1 = 1, i.e. the event f1; 0lf ; 1g. The orresponding statisti of interest is the soalled erasure-free run distribution EFRD, whi h is the probability that an erasure-free run is longer than lf pa kets. We started with a MEC of memory oder 2, but found out that it is by far no t su ient to approximate the GPRS pa ket erasure hannel. By stepwise in reasing the memory order of the

0.01 0.1 1 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Erasure & Erasure-free Run Distribution Length in packets GPRS with ideal frequency hopping, TU03, CS-1, C/I = 7.5dB, Markov order: 9 Empirical EFRD Empirical ERD Markov Model EFRD Markov Model ERD Fig. 7. Erasure and erasure-free run distributions for GSM GPRS (ideal frequen y hopping, COST-model TU03, oding s heme 1, and target C=I = 7:5dB): empiri al urves (points) and approximation by a MEC of order 9 (dashed lines). MEC we observed that we get a pie ewise linear fun tion (on a logarithmi s ale) that su essively allows the approximation of one more point of the empiri al run distributions. As Fig. 7 shows, a MEC of order 9 yields a quite good approximation for both EFRD and ERD. On e the MEC model has been parameterized, it an easily be applied to the network simulator for further examinations of the link behaviour. In our ase, we were mainly interested in optimizing the system in terms of throughput maximization and in analyzing the end-to-end p erforman e of TCP/IP onne tions in a GPRS environment. Espe ially interesting is the throughput at the LLC level. In GRPS, a LLC PDU is segmented into n 1 RLC PDU of

xed length. Let us assume the system is operating without the optional link level ARQ. Then, a LLC frame i s lost, if at least one of the n RLC PDUs has been orrupted while being transmitted. Fig. 8 shows the blo kwise throughput at the LLC layer in dependen e on n for a moderate hannel with a C/I of 10 dB and for all appli able oding s hemes. The blo kwise throughput refers to the payload of a LLC PDU, i.e. LLC and RLC proto ol overheads are taken into a ount. Again, it is presumed that a single user an use all eight time slots. It an be seen that a proper hoi e of both n and the oding s heme is required to a hieve an optimum throughput. A false strategy may lead to a throughput of less than 10kbit/s ompared to the maximum a hievable of about 70kbit/s at this operating point. This learly shows that su h studies are ru ial for a system optimization. At this point it therefore annot be too strongly emphasized that they would be impossible without an a urate lowomplexity abstra t model of the wireless link like the proposed MEC model.

0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000 70000 80000 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Blockwise throughput in bits/s Block length n in packets GPRS with ideal frequency hopping, TU03, C/I = 10.0dB CS-1 CS-2 CS-3 CS-4 Fig. 8. Blo kwise throughput vs. blo k length n for GSM GPRS (ideal frequen y hopping, TU03), C=I = 10 dB, and dierent oding s hemes. VII. Con lusions We have presented a new probabilisti model based on Markov hains for wireless pa ket erasure hannels, that approximates the erasure hara teristi s of the underlying pa ket transmission system with a high level of a ura y. Besides a ura y, the proposed MEC model limits the omplexity to a minimum, su h that it is easy and e ient to implement and in addition mathemati ally tra table. It has been detailed how the MEC model an be implemented in network simulation environments. The validity of our approa h has been veri

ed by means of the GSM GPRS system. As our simulation results have shown, the proposed MEC model has proved to be an adequate model for wireless pa ket erasure hannels a ording to GPRS. It an surely be expe ted that these results do also hold for other kind of wireless pa ket erasure hannels. Referen es [1. K. Fall and K. Varadhan, ns Notes and Do umentation, The VINT Proje t, UC Berkeley, July 1999 [2. L. Kanal and A. R. K. Sastry, \Models for hannels with memory and their appli ations to error ontrol", Pro . IEEE vol. 66, no. 7, pp. 724{744, July 1978 [3. G. Liebl, Modeling, Theoreti al Analysis, and Coding for Wireless Pa ket Erasure Channels, Diploma Thesis, Inst. for Communi ations Engineering, Muni h University of Te hnology, 1999 [4. J. Cai and D.J. Goodman, \General Pa ket Radio Servi e in GSM", IEEE Communi ations Magazine vol. 35, no. 10, pp. 122-131, O tober 1999 [5. C. Bettstetter, H.J. Vogel and J. Eberspae her, \GSM Phase 2+ - General Pa ket Radio Servi e GPRS: Ar hite ture, Proto ols, and Air Interfa e", IEEE Communi ations Surveys vol. 2, no. 3, 1999