Impact of radio resource allocation policies on the TD-CDMA system performance: evaluation of major critical parameters

This paper investigates the impact of major critical parameters and the effect of some radio resource allocation policies on the TD-CDMA system performance. Critical parameters are related either to the user behavior (e.g., user mobility, activity factors) or to processing techniques and algorithms implemented to control network performance and individual radio link quality (e.g., joint detection imperfection, handover margin, timeout for maintaining alive bad radio links). Network topology (e.g., distance between neighboring base stations) also undoubtedly influences capacity results. Analysis is carried out through accurate modeling of user behavior, interference scenarios, and power budget limitations at both terminals and infrastructure, allowing for proper implementation of radio resource allocation algorithms. Among these algorithms, power management (both at the initial channel assignment and during communication), dynamic channel allocation (DCA), and ongoing calls management are explored. An event-driven simulation approach was considered to model realistic system behavior and address system stability under various events generating traffic/interference fluctuations (e.g., call arrivals and departures, handovers, steps of power control loops). Such an approach is expected to offer a good estimate of the real conditions provided the propagation models are close to real life. As a consequence, measures to be taken to avoid/control overloading in a TD-CDMA (CDMA in general) environment can be naturally derived and tested with this methodology.