Strategies for the Efficient Dimensioning of 3G Mobile Access Networks

After a delay of some years, third generation mobile communication systems are beginning to be deployed. Thus, most European countries are currently involved in the installation of commercial UMTS networks based on the Release 99 set of specifications of the 3GPP. The main novelty of these first UMTS networks lies on the access segment, including both the radio and the fixed transmission infrastructure. Regarding the latter, Release 99 specifications establish the use of ATM, a technology largely used for the deployment of broadband backbones for multi-service networks with QoS requirements. Its use in the UMTS access network, however, is subject to optimization requirements because of the high costs associated to the transmission resources. In this paper we describe a simulation tool aimed to evaluate the performance of different network and traffic configuration alternatives that an operator may face when designing the terrestrial portion of its UMTS access network (UTRAN). In order to illustrate some of the tool features we also include and discuss a set of sample results comparing two possible traffic aggregation strategies inside the UTRAN.