Journal of China Institute of Technology Vol.32-2005.

A Study of Trunked Radio Applications for Mobile Cellular
Systems

Lun-Chung Peng

Lecturer
Department of Electronic Engineering
China Institute Technology

Abstract

For the applications of grouping communications, the dispatch systems, also known
as the trunked radio systems, are applied to provide the one-to-many two-way
half-duplex services. Due to the existing numerous subscribers, it is favorable to
provide the grouping communication services in mobile cellular systems. In this work,
the subject of integrating the trunked radio services into mobile cellular systems is
investigated. A system model for trunked radio services in multi-cell cellular systems
has been proposed. Some simulation results, based on quality of service, are provided.

The simulation results can benefit the system planning and radio resource
management.

Keywords: Trunked Radio System; Dispatch System; Mobile Cellular System; Radio Resources
Management.

I. INTRODUCTION

Mobile cellular systems are the most popular wireless communication systems for
commercial applications. The second generation mobile cellular systems have been
widely deployed around the world, and the third generation systems are emerging for
high data rate applications [1]-[2]. For the applications of grouping communications,
the dispatch systems, also known as the trunked radio systems, are applied to provide
the one-to-many two-way half-duplex services [3]-[4]. Due to the existing numerous
subscribers, it is favorable to provide the grouping communication services in mobile
cellular systems. Since mobile cellular systems are originally designed for one-to-one
personal applications, some technique issues arise from integrating the grouping
communication services into these systems.
In this work, the subject of integrating the trunked radio services into mobile cellular
systems is investigated. A system model for trunked radio services in multi-cell
cellular systems has been proposed. Some simulation results, based on quality of
service [2], are provided.

II. SYSTEM AND TRAFFIC MODELS

A. System Model

For providing trunked radio services in mobile cellular systems, a service area is
form by multiple cells. All users, belonging to the same group, can receive the same
message in the same service area. In this work, we assume that there are a total of G
groups, each of them which contain n users in a service area, which assumed to
consist of m cells [5]-[6]. All users are assumed to be uniformly distributed among
these m cells. It is noted that the radio resources consumption is imbalanced for
uplink and downlink under this scenario. In the downlink, the message of an arbitrary

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group is broadcast in these m cells; therefore it consumes one downlink channel in

each cell. On the other hand, in the uplink, the message of an arbitrary group is
transmitted from a specific user to the serving base station. Thus, only one uplink
channel in the serving cell is consumed. It is assumed that Cu uplink channels and
Cd downlink channels are assigned for trunked radio services in each cell [2].

B. Group Traffic Arrival Model

The group traffic arrival is assumed to be a Poisson process. Since the n users in the
same group are regarded as sharing a common communication channel, the group
traffic arrival rate should proportional to n [7]. However, it is reasonable that an upper
bound of the group traffic arrival rate exists for n approaching infinity. The group
traffic arrival rate g , depending on the number of users in this group. It is defined as

n

g ( n) = 1 e 2 . (1)

Where is the parameter reflecting the dependence upon the number of users, and
is the maximum group traffic arrival rate, i.e. g () = [8]-[9] .

III. CALL PROCESS

For a user requesting for a trunked radio service, it will firstly contend for an uplink
channel in the serving cell. If this contention is successful, this request will send to
the service area controller (such as the base station controller, BSC) to contend for a
downlink channel [2]-[10]. Fig. 1 shows the queuing model for the trunked radio
services in mobile cellular systems. The system is a two-stage queuing system. The
first stage, containing m parallel queues corresponding to m cells, represents the
uplink contention. The second stage, containing only one queue corresponding to the
BSC, represents the downlink contention [5].

The functionality of the queue BSQ, in first stage, is to manage the uplink channels
and send the request information to the BSC. After the BSC has collected all
information from all BS, a decision of each group which can access the downlink

channels is made. If there is no downlink channel available, the request will be

queued in the queue BSCQ, in second stage. It is noted that, for the request queued in
BSCQ, the corresponding uplink channel will be seized until this request has been
completely serviced [11]-[12]-[13]-[14].

IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

In the simulation results, the system is assumed to support 10 groups, each of them
contain 20 users. The call holding time is assumed to be an exponentially distributed
random variable with the mean 15 sec, and the group traffic arrival model presented
in Sec. II B is applied.

Fig. 2 shows the average waiting time per group versus the number of downlink
channels, for. m = 4 and the different number of uplink channels. The average waiting
time decreases when the number of downlink or uplink channels increases. For the
number of uplink channels Cu 2 and the number of downlink channels Cd 3 ,
then the system performance is acceptable, with the average waiting time
approximated to 10 sec. However, if more radio resources are devoted, the
improvement is insignificant.

Fig. 3 shows the average queue length versus the number of downlink channels, for m
= 4 and the different number of uplink channels. The solid lines show the results of
the uplink queue (BSQ) length, and the dashed lines show the results of the downlink
queue (BSCQ) length. The queue length decreases as the number of downlink or
uplink channels increases.

Fig. 4 shows the mean waiting time versus the number of uplink channels, for
different values of m. The number of downlink channel is assumed to be 5. For a
larger value of m, corresponding to a smaller user density, a better system
performance can be obtained.
Fig. 5 show the large effect due to variations of the number of groups, for m = 4 and
the number of up-link channel is assumed to be 5 per cell.
These figures are used to support the design of trunked radio systems before they are
constructed.

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V. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, the subject of integration of the trunked radio services into mobile
cellular systems has been investigated. A system model and some simulation results
for trunked radio services in multi-cell cellular systems have been proposed. The
simulation results can benefit the system planning and radio resource management.

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[8] S. Woods, Probability and Random Processes with Applications to Signal
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[9] A. L. Garcia, Probability and Random Process for Electrical Engineering, 2nd
Edition, New York, Addison-Wesley Inc, 2002.

[10] D. Gross and C. M. Harris, Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, 3rd Edition, New
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[11] G. Bolch, S. Greiner, H. de. Meer and K. S. Trivedi, Queuing Networks and
Markov Chain, 2nd Edition, New York, Wiley-Interscience publication, Oct.
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[12] F. Barcelo, V. Casares and J. Paradell, M/D/C queue with priority: Application
to trunked mobile radio system, Electronics Letters, vol. 32, pp.1644, Aug.
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[13] F. Gutierrez and A. Valdovions, Development of a traffic simulator for mobile
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Fig. 1. System model for multi-cell trunked radio services.

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Fig. 2. Average waiting time per group versus the number of downlink channels for
different number of uplink channels.

Fig. 3. Average queue length versus the number of downlink channels for different
number of uplink channels.

Fig. 4. Average waiting time versus the number of uplink channels for different
number of cells in a service area.

Fig .5. Average waiting time versus the number of groups, there are 5 up link
channels per cell