Modular system-level simulator concept for OFDMA systems

Modeling and simulation is essential for performance evaluation of wireless systems and specific algorithms used, for instance, during resource allocation. For current and future wireless systems, several properties have to be considered such as data traffic, frequency selective fading channels, and radio resource management. Throughout this article, a new system-level simulator concept is presented for packet switched systems using OFDMA, which is called snapshot-based SLS and represents a compromise between state-of-the-art static and dynamic SLSs. The proposed methodology only considers short time intervals within the busy hour by their statistics so that RRM and data traffic can be considered, as in dynamic SLS, but with lower computational complexity. In this article a description is given of how the cellular setup and traffic generation are performed for the proposed snapshot concept. Furthermore, a new methodology is proposed for a quality measure of resource units that is applicable to future wireless systems using an interleaved subcarrier allocation. Exemplary simulation results show that the developed concept is able to evaluate the performance of OFDMA systems considering the impact of, for example, data traffic and resource allocation strategies.