Signaling Measurements on the Packet Domain of 3G-UMTS Core Network

There is significant signaling message activity in Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) among Core Network (CN) elements for the mobility management of UMTS subscribers. The time-overhead introduced with the performance of these signaling operations is a crucial factor that determines the overall performance of UMTS technology and affects greatly the application Quality of Service (QoS). This paper presents the experiments conducted towards the Packet Domain of a real UMTS CN and provides timing results concerning the performance evaluation of GPRS Mobility Management (GMM) signaling procedures and the establishment, maintenance and release of GMM contexts.