A novel hybrid simulation methodology for capacity estimation in mobile networks

Radio capacity simulation tools are gaining a large importance with the development of mobile networks. System radio simulators that are currently used in standardization bodies are becoming increasingly complex as they have to work on two time scales: the scale of ”milliseconds” for modeling the behavior of schedulers and the scale of ”tens of seconds” for modeling the dynamic behavior of arrivals and departures of users. In this paper, we propose a hybrid system simulation methodology that combines the advantages of system simulators in accurately modeling the physical/MAC interfaces, with the robustness of queuing theory analysis that catches the flow dynamics. We validate our simulation methodology versus complete system level simulators in representative scenarios and show an excellent match between both methodologies. We then show how to extend our simulation methodology for including a mix of services and how to incorporate network measurement results within the proposed methodology.