Throughput and buffer analysis for GSM General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)

The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Phase 2+ standard specifies a new type of packet data service called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). GPRS allows the dynamic allocation of bandwidth resources. Wireless channels are allocated to a mobile terminal based on its traffic demands. This results in better resource utilization compared to the circuit-based data services. In general, packet-based communication has more bursty traffic and longer connection time compared to its circuit-based counterpart. A communication session may last for an extended period of time with intermittent packet transmissions. This traffic behavior coupled with flexible bandwidth allocation in a GPRS network results in multiplexing gain that is not available in circuit switched data networks. This paper evaluates the throughput and buffer utilization in a GPRS network under Internet traffic models, such as WWW and E-mail. The performance of GPRS is then compared with the circuit based GSM network to demonstrate the improvement due to multiplexing gain.