Utilising Spare Capacity in Radio Access Networks
Per Lindtorp · 1999
The utilisation of the radio resources in future mobile telecommunication networks is expected to be high, due to the increasing demand for Internet access and the scarce radio resources. This thesis describes how new services that only utilise spare capacity should be provided. Models and evaluations of the available capacity for packet switched mobile telephony networks such as GPRS and UMTS are presented. The capacity during daytime is limited and fluctuates considerably. The introduction of several quality of service levels is strongly advocated in order to protect sensitive applications and to provide cheap background service classes. In order to provide the background class with a low price the quality of service level has to be low in order to avoid disturbing the market potential for other service classes. The cheap background class would make room for new applications that require substantial transmission capacity but can accept long delays. These applications should not require user interaction. Examples of such applications are push services such as music, news and software distribution. The transmission costs for push services that only utilise spare capacity should be very low ideally independent of the amount of data sent. It is very important that the network operators have a flat-rate background class. To maximise the utilisation of the spare capacity it is very important to have substantial storage capacity in the mobile devices. Since the transmission cost should be flat-rated, the memory in the mobile devices will always be filled. A substantial increase in storage capacity will therefore allow new services to emerge.