A new model for network traffic forecast based on user's mobility in cellular networks with highway stretches

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Abstract
Wireless communications have always faced the scarceness of bandwidth and until today the cellular division has solved this problem by making radio cells always smaller. However, as cell size is reduced, more users will probably require handoffs, and signaling can overload the system. Further, the decrease in cell dimension cannot ensure the best utilization of system resources, because user density in the cell is not constant over the time. Dynamic allocation might be the solution, but it is a complex task, basically due to complexity of the models for the mobility prediction, especially in those environments where users move very fast (e.g. highways). This last one is a typical environment where high mobility of vehicles does not allow small cell sizes and thus system capacity is intrinsically bounded.In this paper, we deploy an analytical model for a cellular network operating in a high mobility environment. Such a model is capable of representing and forecasting wireless system evolution in terms of channel occupancy, starting from the current state of the mobile network and road traffic. This model has been defined by integrating a vehicular traffic model with a wireless cellular communication one. With such approach the dynamic behaviour of the most critical mobile terminals, those associated with vehicles, are described in a very precise and specific way with respect to mobility.Many results obtained with specific simulation tools and herein reported show the good behaviour of our proposal. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.