System-level simulation methodology and platform for mobile cellular systems

System-level simulation has been widely used to evaluate the comprehensive performance of different mobile cellular systems. System-level simulation methodologies for different systems have been discussed by different organizations and institutions. However, the framework for a unified simulation methodology and platform has not been established. In this article, we propose a general unified simulation methodology for different cellular systems. Both the design of the simulation structure and the establishment of the simulation platform are studied. Meanwhile, the unified modeling and the realization of various modules related to the system-level simulation are presented. The proposed unified simulation methodology and the general simulation platform can be used to evaluate the performance of multiple mobile communication systems fairly. Finally, the overall performance of LTE and Mobile WiMAX systems is evaluated through the proposed framework. The key simulation results for both Full Buffer and VoIP traffics are presented and discussed. It is shown that the LTE system exhibits better performance than Mobile WiMAX.