Performance Evaluation of the WAP Protocol over SMS in a GSM Network

The widespread diffusion of mobile communication systems pushes research and development efforts towards the implementation of new services accessible through mobile terminals. This work has been carried out in the framework of the PALIO Project in the fifth Research Framework of the European Commission. It has been considered a tourist service where each user may access information directly through its mobile GSM phone by means of the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). This paper investigates the performance of WAP over the short message service. A suitable traffic model has been identified and a GSM signalling configuration has been selected to provide the information service at the city level. Accordingly it has been possible to evaluate the delay required to transmit WAP decks to users. This study is particularly interesting because it provides a tool for sizing the envisaged tourist service.