TABLE OF CONTENTS Computer simulations of mobile systems is a very powerful tool to assess the system performance. The real life performance can, of course, be measured and evaluated in the field for an already deployed system and such values represent a valid example of performance for a certain system configuration. But there are several advantages with computer simulations:
Evaluation can be made of system concepts that are not deployed or still under development such as LTE.
There is full control of the environment, including propagation parameters, traffic, system lay-out, etc., and full traceability of all parameters affecting the result.
Well-controlled experiments comparing similar system concepts or parts of concepts can be done under repeatable conditions.
In spite of the advantages, simulation results do obviously not give a full picture of the performance of a system. It is impossible to model all aspects of the mobile environment and to properly model the behavior of all components in a system. Still, a very good picture of system performance can be obtained and it can often be used to find the potential limits for performance. Because of the difficulty in modeling all relevant aspects, relative capacity measures for introducing features will be more accurate than absolute capacity numbers, if a good model is introduced of the feature in question.
The capacity of a system is difficult to assess without comparisons, since any system performance...
