Transport performance evaluation of an ATM-based UMTS access network

One of the challenges of the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) is to bring closer together the mobile and the broadband fixed networks (B-ISDN/ATM). The objective is to use the same fixed network infrastructure and to offer mobile terminal users the same services as those available to the fixed terminal users. In this context, the design of the UMTS pursues service, transport and signaling protocol integration with fixed B-ISDN. This paper focuses on the transport integration aspects. Guidelines and mechanisms towards the definition of a fixed, ATM-based, access transport system for the target UMTS are given. The evaluation of the transport architecture, considering the European Advanced TDMA (ATDMA) technology at the radio interface, demonstrates the behavior of the system under various speech traffic loads, and yields results which fall within acceptable ATM performance measures.