13.3 System Traffic Estimation

The traffic estimation for the CDMA2000 system is directly dependant upon the type and quality of services that will be offered and how they will be transported. The traffic estimation process involves not only the radio link, but also the other fixed facilities that comprise the network.

The process and methodology for conducting system traffic engineering, that is, determining the amount of physical and logical resources that need to be in place at different points and nodes within the network to support the current and future traffic. The determination of existing traffic loads is rather more straight forward in that you have existing information from which to make decisions upon. For future forecasts, the level of uncertainty grows exponentially the farther the forecast or planning takes you into the future. However many elements in the network require long lead times, ranging from three weeks to over one year to implement. Obviously, the goal of traffic engineering is to design the network and its sub-components to not only meet the design criteria, which should be driven by both technical, marketing, and sales, but also be done so that it is achieved in a cost-effective manner. It is not uncommon to have conflicting objectives within a design, that is, to ensure that the customers have the highest QOS/GOS for both voice and packet data, but yet have a limited amount of capital from which to achieve this goal. Therefore it is important to define at the onset of...