NS-2 enhancements for detailed HSDPA simulations

Abstract

The Enhanced UMTS Radio Access Network Extensions (EURANE) provided UMTS and HSDPA support in the Network Simulator (NS-2). The main components of EU- RANE include the Radio Link Control (RLC) layer with the Acknowledged and Unacknowledged Modes, MAC layer for the main UMTS and HSDPA transport channels and a physical-layer simulation tool for simulating the fast chan- nel variations in HSDPA. Although it has added most of the UMTS protocol stack to NS-2, EURANE does not support multiple cells, user mobility or handover which are necessary to study the system-level performance of RLC layer, han- dover and Iub flow control. In this paper, we describe new extensions and a redesign of EURANE to overcome these limitations and provide additional functionality. The new simulator supports user mobility using Random Waypoint mobility models and handover. In addition, the simulator provides an enhanced signaling protocol for Iub flow control that allow adding new flow control algorithms to EURANE whenever needed. © 2008 ICST ISBN.