Analysis of Uplink Traffic Characteristics and Impact on Performance in Mobile Data Networks

User-generated content (UGC) also known as user- created content (UCC) refers to various kinds of media contents that are produced by end users. A recent trend in the use of the Internet exhibits that data traffic from UGC is rapidly growing with the potential to create a huge amount of uplink traffic for wireless operators. As the reality of UGC´s scope and power is becoming crystalized, modeling and analysis of uplink traffic has just begun to receive growing attention in the wireless community. Consequently, we have also analyzed live uplink traffic traces obtained by monitoring 3G networks of a mobile data service provider (SK Telecom in Korea). Our statistical analysis shows the self-similarity in this traffic trace. In order to evaluate the impact of this characteristics on mobile data networks, we use the WiMAX module available in OPNET software. Our trace-driven simulation results indicate burstiness in the aggregated traffic received at a base station (BS) as well as in the traffic generated at each subscriber station (SS). The impact of the data burst at SSs is shown to be negligible when the overall traffic load is relatively small but become significant when a large volume of delay-sensitive traffic is generated in many SSs even if the overall network load is less than the network capacity.