Performance Analysis of Mobile Hotspots with Heterogeneous Wireless Links

Mobile hotspot enabling Internet access services in moving vehicles is an important service for ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for studying the packet loss behavior and throughput in a mobile hotspot with heterogeneous wireless links. We first develop a two-state Markov model for the integrated wireless wide area network (WWAN) and wireless local area network (WLAN). We then derive the expressions that describe the experienced packet loss probability, packet loss burst length, and throughput. Finally, we present simulation results to verify the accuracy of our analysis. It is concluded that adaptive and cross-layer approaches should be deployed to improve the performance of mobile hotspots.