Simulation of General Packet Radio Service Network

In this paper, we describe an OPNET model of a General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network. The model captures the signaling and transmission behavior of the GPRS network. We first introduce a GPRS network and describe the signaling and transmission procedures that will be modeled. In order to point out the simplifications made in the OPNET model, we then address the differences between the GPRS OPNET model and the standard. We also describe the implementation of each model component: node model, packet format, process model, and state variables corresponding to each component. Furthermore, we illustrate the use of OPNET to abstract the signaling and transmission behavior of the GPRS network. Discussion of the simulation results follows the implementation details. The GPRS network consists of sources with two distinct classes of Quality of Service (QoS), connected to a sink. We consider two simulation scenarios. The first scenario is used to confirm that the GPRS network model allows a Mobile Station (MS) that has subscribed to a GPRS service to access the network, to set up a data session, and to transfer uplink user data. Simulation results of the packet end-to-end delay also confirm that the two classes of QoS are correctly implemented. In the second simulation scenario, we capture various statistics to illustrate the model’s performance. We conclude by addressing how the model can be deployed as a performance assessment tool in a genuine GPRS network.