Performability and survivability analysis of GSM

The concept of performability takes into accounts both availability and performance of a system [1][2] and survivability is broadly defined as the degree to which a system is able to provide critical services [3]. The ideal survivability goal is to make a network failure imperceptible to the users by providing service continuity and minimizing network congestion. This paper addresses above issues for a Global System for Mobile (GSM) network. There exist many failure scenarios in GSM networks like base transreceiver station (BTS) failure, VLR, HLR or other database failure etc. When a BTS stops all functioning, it is designated as BTS failure which is primarily considered in developing models and further analysis. Markov models have been developed for accessing the performance, availability and survivability of GSM with a scheme developed for minimizing the impact of failure. Its merits over ordinary GSM network are established in terms of performability and various attributes of survivability following general framework discussed in [Yun Liu and Trivedi, 2003].