Analytical comparison of different GPRS introduction strategies

Abstract

The ongoing introduction of GPRS services in existing GSM networks by mobile network providers raises the question of the best strategy to partition the available cell capacity. The paper describes three different strategies — complete partitioning, partial sharing and complete sharing. An analytical call/burst level model of one cell of a homogeneous multiservice GSM/GPRS network is used to investigate these strategies with respect to important performance measures like new and handover blocking probabilities, system utilization and mean data rates of the services. Numerical results show, that the complete sharing strategy in connection with the proposed admission policy achieves a high system utilization while even for low priority data connections some minimum quality of service is guaranteed.