Resource Efficiency of Traffic-Centric Models for Complex LTE Systems

Simulation is the dominating method to model wireless communication systems, especially fourth generation (4G) wireless technologies, such as 3GPP long term evolution (LTE). However, orthodox simulation, i.e., discrete-event simulation (DES), has severe short-comings. It takes days, weeks, and even months, to produce sound performance estimates. As for 4G in general, LTE is connection-oriented. Including connection -- and packet-level activities in one model poses serious resource-requirement problems because the time-resolution of events at each respective level differs to the order of magnitude of at least 10E06. Consequently, Traffic-Centric Modelling (TCM) has been proposed as a feasible alternative to DES. In this paper, we present a TCM model of an LTE uplink scenario as proof-of-concept that TCM is, in fact, capable of modelling complex systems. Moreover, experimental results indicate a significant improvement in temporal and spatial resource-requirements achieved by TCM.