Modeling and Simulation of Wireless Packet Erasure Channels

Abstract

We will present a new model for wireless packet erasure channels, which can be used for both theoretical analysis and real-time simulation of network protocol performance. The correlation between successive packet losses will be described by a higher-order Markov process, which can be transformed into an equivalent first-order Markov chain, such that all major performance measures can be derived from the model. Since our approach belongs to the class of generative discrete channel models, it can also be used as a stochastic source to reproduce an infinite sequence of erasure indicator values with desired stochastic properties. Thus, it can be easily implemented into network simulation environments in terms of a lossy link element, where both short-term and long-term fading on the mobile radio link are taken into account separately. Finally, we will show some modeling results for a GSM GPRS system, which is a packet-oriented transmission service to be launched in Europe in spring 2000. In addition, we will demonstrate the effects of different packet sizes and channel coding rates on end-to-end throughput.