A Simulation Environment for Enhanced UMTS Performance Evaluation

J. Antoniou, V. Vassiliou , A. Pitsillides, G. Hadjipollas and N. Jacovides

Department of Computer Science
University of Cyprus
Nicosia, Cyprus
josephin@ucy.ac.cy

Abstract The paper proposes a new simulator that

supports UMTS and Enhanced-UMTS performance
evaluation. Existing UMTS simulators integrate linklevel and system-level simulators, implemented using
time-based simulation techniques. The proposed
simulator integrates time-based link level simulations
into an event-based system level simulator by
extending ns-2. The simulator can evaluate
parameters associated with UMTS or EnhancedUMTS performance (delay, loss, jitter, throughput), to
assess the impact of new services, protocols and
architectures. Performance evaluation does not only
capture the performance over the air interface but
also investigates the influence of the all-IP network in
the overall system behaviour. A scenario modelling a
demanding traffic-mix in a business city centre
environment is evaluated and results are presented.
I. INTRODUCTION
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System
(UMTS), standard belongs to the 3rd Generation (3G) of
mobile networks. The main idea behind 3G is to prepare a
universal infrastructure able to carry both existing and
future services. 3G is standardized by the worldwide 3G
Partnership Projects (3GPP in Europe and 3GPP2 in
USA) [1], [2].
The UMTS and All-IP UMTS network infrastructure will
have to provide network service to a variety of
applications that can seamlessly integrate voice and data
through various wireless access technologies (GSM,
Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA),
and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA2000)).
An Enhanced UMTS network is an All-IP based network
that will support additions and modifications to the
UMTS network [3]. Such modifications aim to satisfy the
need for a capacity increase in the access network,
flexibility in the core network and support supplementary
integrated services that the standardized UMTS network
is not expected to provide. Therefore, Enhanced UMTS is
a UMTS evolution step, which makes possible an
effective end-to-end packet-based transmission.

This work has been performed in the framework of the IST-2001-34900

SEACORN project

Department of Computer Science

INTERCOLLEGE
Nicosia, Cyprus
vassiliou.v@intercollege.ac.cy

Enhanced-UMTS system-level simulations aim to model

a network based on an existing or planned topology
design, an estimated traffic distribution and a mix of
services with multiple Quality of Service (QoS)
requirements. This is opposed to second-generation
networks where the main application to be considered was
voice, and QoS was easy to predict even for full load.
The system-level simulations parameters target coverage,
capacity and QoS in the real network. These answer the
question of whether the designed network can support the
envisaged traffic mix. Consequently, parameters affecting
QoS support for applications can be examined. This
allows one to investigate how applications function in
varying radio environments, under different network
topologies (Radio Access Network [RAN] and Core
Network), architectures and protocols.
This paper proposes a simulation environment that
enables the performance evaluation of All-IP UMTS [4]
and Enhanced-UMTS networks. The need for such a
simulator arises from the multi-type user aspects of
UMTS and Enhanced-UMTS, as well as the need to
consider user mobility, handover, Radio Resource
Management (RRM) mechanisms, in an All-IP RAN and
Core network, within such a framework. This framework
also allows the development of flexible models,
algorithms, new network protocols and RRM mechanisms
for the deployment of the future UMTS networks.
Contrary to existing time-based system level simulator
approaches [12], [13], which are based on integrating
time-base link level simulations with a time based system
level simulator, our proposed system level simulator
integrates time-based link level simulations into an eventbased system level UMTS simulator. It extends ns-2, a
popular public domain network simulator [5].
The paper is structured as follows. Section II addresses
the basic design and structure of the simulator. Section III
provides a proof-of-concept demonstration of results for a
traffic mix scenario in a business city centre environment
and Section IV presents the conclusions and ideas for
future work.
II. SYSTEM LEVEL SIMULATOR
The proposed UMTS system-level simulator was
developed by extensions to ns-2 (Network Simulator
version 2), a publicly available network simulation

environment [5]. UMTS extensions were implemented

within the IST SEACORN project [3]. The simulator was
implemented according to the system architecture of
Enhanced-UMTS for packet-switched operations,
illustrated in Figure 1. The very demanding requirement
of preparing a universal infrastructure to support current
and future UMTS services is achieved by the separation
of the access, the transport and the service (connection
control) technologies. Therefore, the entire architecture
can be broken down into subsystems based on different
parameters such as the nature of traffic, protocol
structures or physical elements.
Radio
Interface

UTRAN

Environment and Performance Evaluation. The system

level simulator structure is presented in Figure 2.
This modular approach allows the implementation and
investigation of current and new networking protocols,
which aim to address QoS provision issues (e.g. Diff-Serv
architecture [9], RMD [10], IDCC [11]).

Core Network

IP

RNC
Node B

SGSN

GGSN

Packet-Switched
Domain

UE

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
* 8 #

Node B

Figure 1: UMTS Architecture for Packet Switched Operations

The architecture includes the Radio Access Network

(RAN) and the Core Network (CN). The RAN consists of
the User Equipment (UE) and the UMTS Terrestrial
Radio Access Network (UTRAN). The nodes comprising
the UTRAN are: the base station (Node-B), the IP routers,
and the Radio Network Controller (RNC) [6]. The Core
network includes the Serving GPRS Support Node
(SGSN) and the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN).
SGSN is responsible for the delivery of data packets from
and to the UEs within its service area. GGSN allows
interconnection with external packet switched networks
(e.g. other IP networks) [7].
UEs communicate with Node-Bs in a wireless mode via
the radio interface. Each Node-B manages the network's
air interface for the UEs that are in the same cell as the
Node-B. The RNC manages the resources of the air
interface of all the UEs connected to Node-Bs served by
that RNC. It coordinates the admission control process,
manages the handovers of UEs between Node-Bs due to
UE mobility, buffers packets destined for UEs, and
communicates with the SGSN allowing the SGSN to send
and receive data to and from the UEs. An RNC will be
connected to multiple Node-Bs to communicate with the
UEs of the network and to manage multiple calls. The
interconnection of the RAN with the Node-Bs is done
using IP-based routers [8].
The ns-2 extensions include all the UMTS-aware nodes
(UE, Node B, RNC) and models representing the radio
propagation, the mobility, the RRM mechanisms and the
traffic mix for different operating environments. For the
external networks (core network) the simulator uses
default ns-2 nodes.
The simulator is built in a modular manner. The modules
may be categorized according to their functionality into
three main categories: Control Mechanisms, Mobile

Figure 2: System level simulator modules

In IP-based networks QoS cannot be guaranteed. Hence,

the bottleneck can be anywhere in the network (i.e. it is
not limited to the air interface). The proposed system
level simulator allows capturing not only the air interface
behaviour as the only probable bottleneck (a common
assumption in most literature that deals with system level
simulations of mobile environments [12], [13]), but also
the dynamic end-to-end behaviour of the overall network.
III. EVALUATING A SCENARIO
The proposed simulations framework allows the
evaluation of scenarios that reflect the projected traffic
behaviour in a UMTS and Enhanced UMTS network, for
different topologies, under given network architectures
and protocols. These scenarios should represent realistic
conditions, including but not limited to, a sensible
transmission range, representative data traffic models,
mobility models, as well as accurate radio propagation
models.
In parallel, a concerted effort is provided to cut down
simulation times, without significantly reducing accuracy.
For example, a limited number of focused sub-problems
can be specified and for each sub-problem the simulation
requirements can be determined. Furthermore, the level of
required detail regarding traffic, mobility models, RRM
mechanisms and propagation environments can be
investigated. The simulator is able to perform systemlevel simulations in order to evaluate the performance of
the network itself by monitoring several QoS indices (e.g.
delay, loss, jitter, and throughput).
A. Mobile Environments
A usual separation of the operating environments is in
outdoor environments and indoor environments. By
outdoor environments we mean physical locations that are
outdoors such as: roads and railway tracks, rural areas,

urban areas and downtown areas. On the other hand,

indoor environments include: home, office, airports, train
stations, commercial zones, theatres, stadiums and
parking zones.
When simulating mobile networks, there is one further
classification of environments that needs to be made. The
environments need to be separated according to their cell
size (defined by the maximum transmit power of each
Node B). There are usually three categories: pico-cellular
environments, micro-cellular environments and macrocellular environments.
Pico-cellular environments are characterised by small
cells and low transmit powers, and both the users and the
base stations are located indoors. Some examples of
physical environments that correspond to the pico-cellular
category are: home, office, airport and train stations,
malls, theatres, covered stadiums and covered parking
zones.
Micro-cellular environments are characterised by small
cells and low transmit powers as well. Usually, however,
only outdoor users are considered. Examples of microcellular environments are: open stadiums, open parking
lots, open commercial zones, downtown areas (business
city centres).
The macro-cellular environments have large cells and
transmit high powers as opposed to the previous two
types of environments. The cell radius reaches 2000m for
services less than 144kbps and 500m for higher rates.
Distances between base stations vary from 1km to 6km.
Examples of such environments are: urban areas, rural
areas, roads and railway tracks.
B. Environment Specifications
The environment modelled in the illustrative example is a
business city centre environment. High buildings and high
user density characterize this environment. The model
used follows the Manhattan grid model [15]. For a single
cell, four buildings separated by a crossroad are modelled.
Each building has dimensions 200m x 200m and the
width of the roads is 30m. The nodes in the simulations
are UMTS-enabled nodes developed for the IST Project
SEACORN. One RNC, one Node B, 300 UEs, one
SGSN, one GGSN, and two external IP-enabled nodes are
used in this scenario.
The simulation topology consists of a single cell with the
Node B connected to the RNC. Two nodes represent the
SGSN and GGSN and more nodes represent external IP
networks, to model a single communication path between
a number of mobiles and a fixed communicating node.
The topology is shown in Figure 3.
The communicating hosts are an external (non-UMTS
host) node at one end and a number of UEs (UMTS host)
at the other end. Traffic flows from the external node to
another such node (representing the external IP network),
to the GGSN, the SGSN, the RNC, and the Node B and
over the wireless interface to the UEs (in the cell). Traffic
can flow in both directions along this path.

Figure 3: The single cell topology simulated

The propagation models used for simulating the path loss

in a UMTS network are the COST 231 models [16]. The
project COST Action 231 models are based on theoretical
and empirical approaches and extensive measurementcampaigns in European cities. Each of these models may
be used for a separate scenario.
The Propagation model used in the simulation of the
business city centre scenario is called Walfisch-IkegamiLoS model and assumes an air interface that includes
outdoor base stations, buildings, outdoor users, low
speeds and low transmit powers at a Line-of-Sight path.
C. Traffic Mix
Four categories of services are taken into consideration:
sound, high interactive multimedia, narrowband and
wideband services. A corresponding application for each
type of service contributes to the traffic mix according to
its usage percentage.
The four applications considered are Voice over IP
(VoIP), Video-Telephony, FTP, and High Definition
Video-Telephony. Voice Over IP (VoIP) is the
transmission of voice over IP networks instead of the
traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN)
[14]. Video-Telephony is a full-duplex, real-time audiovisual communication between end-users. As high speed
Internet access becomes widely available, video
telephony at high resolution (High-Definition Video
Telephony) is expected to be widely used. Finally, FTP is
a file transfer application.
Table 1: Services with corresponding applications and anticipated
usage for a UMTS business city centre environment.

Service

Application

Sound
High Interactive
Multi-Media
Narrowband
Wideband

Voice Over IP
Video-Telephony
FTP
High
Definition
Video-Telephony

Percentage
Usage
27%
16%

26%
31%

To model the above service mix it is necessary to define

certain characterisation parameters for each service.
These parameters may easily become quite numerous, in
some cases more than can be effectively handled by a
single simulation. Hence, we try to identify a number of

necessary parameters that will abstract the model at an

appropriate level. The first parameter necessary is the
percentage usage, which is given, in Table 1. The
percentage usage of each service reflects the projected
traffic behaviour of Enhanced UMTS in a business city
centre environment.
Besides the usage, necessary modelling parameters
include the data rate for each service, the duration
distribution, and the active and inactive times. Table 2
and Table 3 present these parameters for each service.

narrowband FTP traffic and high bit rate Video

Telephony exceed 120000 packets over the simulation run
of 300 seconds. From the plots it is evident, that for this
topology, the traffic and number of users used do not have
a major effect on the end-to-end delay per packet (system
capacity is not overloaded). For all traffic types the delay
is relatively constant for the duration of the simulation.
The average delay for all types and all users is below
100ms (between 90ms 98ms), which is lower than the
acceptable value for all the examined traffic types.

Table 2: Duration and data rate specifications for each application

Application

Duration
(Distribution/Avg)

Data Rate
(kb/s)

Voice Over IP
Video Telephony
FTP
High Definition
Video Telephony

EXP. / 3min
EXP. / 5min
EXP. / 1-5 s
EXP. / 30min

12
128
384
1920

Table 3: Active and Inactive time specificatins for each application

Application
Voice Over IP
Video Telephony
FTP
High Definition
Video Telephony

Active Time
(Distribution/
Avg)
EXP. / 1.4s

EXP. / 10s
EXP. / 1-5 s
EXP. / 180 s

Inactive Time
(Distribution/
Avg)

Figure 4: End-to-end delay for sound traffic

EXP. / 1.7 s

EXP. /10s
EXP. / 10s

This is a demanding scenario because of the user density

and the support of services close to 2Mb/s such as highdefinition video telephony. The higher usage of this
application in our traffic mix model is both to reflect
future use of this application and to demonstrate the
increase of computational demands on the simulation
environment.
Once each service is modelled and included in the traffic
mix, the performance is monitored according to certain
end-user expectations. These reflect the QoS experienced
by the user. Statistics regarding delay, packet loss as well
as jitter and throughput are collected.

Figure 5: End-to-end delay for multimedia traffic

D. Results
The scenario was run for increasing cell load (number of
users) generating traffic according to the model described
above. The simulation results were obtained by tracing
all packets through all links from source to destination.
Raw data was collected in a trace file, which in turn was
manipulated using additional analysis scripts, in order to
extract information about several performance metrics.
Figures 4-7 show the average delay experienced by each
transmitted packet of the same data type as the load
increases from 100 to 200 users. Observe that the low bit
rate voice connections transmit less than 1000 packets,
the multimedia traffic about 6500 packets, whereas the

Figure 6: End-to-end delay for narrowband FTP traffic

The simulation environment is currently being extended

to handle multi-cellular topologies and more demanding
traffic through more detailed simulation scenarios. These
extensions will provide better understanding of next
generation mobile networks.
V. REFERENCES
3rd Generation Partnership Project.
http://www.3gpp.org
[2] 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2.
http://www.3gpp2.org
[3] Simulation of Enhanced UMTS Access and Core
Networks (SEACORN). http://seacorn.ptinovacao.pt
rd
[4] 3
Generation Partnership Project: Technical
Specification Group Radio Access Networks; RF
System Scenarios (Release 5).
[5] The ns Manual. UC Berkeley, LBL, USC/ISI and
Xerox PARC. April 2002.
rd
[6] 3
Generation Partnership Project: Technical
Specification Group Radio Access Network. 3G TR
25.832 version 3.0.0.
[7] Kaaranen et al. UMTS Networks: Architecture,
Mobility and Services, Finland. Wiley, 2001.
[8] Muratore F. Ed. UMTS: Mobile Communications for
the Future, Wiley, 2001.
[9] Blake et al. An architecture for differentiated
services, Internet RFC 2475, December 1998.
[10] Westberg et. al., Resource Management in Diffserv
(RMD): A functionality and Performance Behavior
Overview, Seventh IFIP/IEEE Workshop on
Protocols for High-Speed Networks (PfHSN'2002),
2002.
[11] Pitsillides
et al. Congestion Control for
Differentiated-Services using Non-Linear Control
Theory, IEEE Symposium on Computers &
Communications, ISCC 2001.
[12] Hoppe et al. Dynamic simulator for studying
WCDMA radio network performance, 53rd
Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) 2001.
[13] Kurjeniemmi et al. System Simulator for UTRA
TDD, 5th CDMA International Conference &
Exhibition.
[14] Varshney U., Snow A., McGivern M., Howard C.
Voice Over IP, Communications of the ACM,
January 2002, Vol.45 No. 1.
[15] Camp T., Boleng J., Davies V. A Survey of
Mobility Models for AdHoc Network Research,.
Wireless Communication & Mobile Computing
(WCMC). Special issue on Mobile Ad Hoc
Networking: Research, Trends and Applications,
vol.2, no. 5, pp.483-502, 2002.
[16] Digital mobile radio towards future generation
systems, COST Action 231, Brussels, Belgium,
1999.
[17] 3GPP Technical Standards TS 22.105. Services and
Service Capabilities. 2001.
[1]

Figure 7: End-to-end delay for wideband High Definition Video

Telephony traffic

For the sound traffic, shown in Figure 4, an expanded

time delay scale is used to highlight the delay variation
over the simulation run. Figure 8 shows the average jitter
for the sound traffic. The maximum jitter recorded is well
below the 1ms range generally accepted for all UMTS
data types [17]. The jitter recorded for the other three
traffic types was even lower.

Figure 8: Average Jitter for sound traffic

As indicated in section III-B, the simulation topology

included only one Node B and mobile users were
restricted to the range of this micro-cell. These resulted in
no instances of call blocking or call dropping and no
handovers. The packet losses were negligible and only for
the wireless last hop.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
This paper presented a new simulation environment for
the performance evaluation of Enhanced UMTS. The
simulator is based on the publicly available ns-2
simulator. The simulator was extended using event-based
techniques. Major extensions were developed to
implement all the UMTS-aware nodes, the expected
traffic types, topology and mobility scenarios.
The paper illustrates a representative scenario for the
simulation of a business city centre. The scenario
specifies the micro-cellular environment, including
propagation models, traffic mix and user mobility. The
simulator functionality was highlighted through this
scenario, demonstrating its capability as a performance
evaluation tool for E-UMTS environment.