Throughput and Buffer Analysis for

GSM General Packet Radio Service (GPRS)

Joseph Ho, Yixin Zhu, and Seshu Madhavapeddy
Nortel Networks
2201 Lakeside Blvd.
Richardson, TX 75082
E-Mail: joeho@nortelnetworks.com
Abstract - 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. Thus 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
result 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 circuit based GSM network to demonstrate the
improvement due to multiplexing gain.
1. Introduction
The popularity of the Internet has resulted in a large number of
services that are available online. These include, E-Mail, World-
Wide-Web (WWW) browsing, and streaming audio/video delivery.
These applications are readily available to every home with a
personal computer and a connection to the Public Switched
Telephone Network (PSTN). The wide acceptance of the Internet has
resulted in an exponential growth of data traffic load in the PTSN.
However, wireless telecommunication networks, such as the Global
System for Mobile communications (GSM), have been used
primarily for voice communications. With the exception of Short
Message Service (SMS), there are very few examples of widely
accepted data applications for wireless networks.
One factor that hinders the growth of wireless data
communication is the inefficiency of circuit switched wireless
networks for transporting packetized data. Internet traffic is
characterized by the ON/OFF behavior. Each communication session
generally lasts for an extended time period. For example, a WWW
browsing session may last for an hour or longer. During the session, a
burst of packet arrivals (ON) is followed by a silent period (OFF).
This ON/OFF pattern continues until the session terminates. When
circuit based technique is used for carrying Internet traffic, the
bandwidth of the dedicated circuit is wasted during the OFF period.
However, the user must pay for the circuit connection for the
duration of the session even though bandwidth is required only
within the ON periods. This results in relatively high cost for data
communication through existing wireless networks.
To allow for more efficient transportation of packet data traffic
through the wireless network, an extension to the GSM standard
called General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) has been developed.
GPRS allows for the dynamic sharing of the wireless bandwidth
among active Mobile Terminals (MTs). No dedicated channel is
assigned to a MT for the duration of the communication session. A
MT is allocated radio bandwidth only when packets are available for
immediate transmission. This results in better bandwidth utilization
and lower communication cost.
This paper presents a study of the effective throughput and data
frame drop rate of the GPRS network under various traffic
parameters and available buffer sizes. Our results demonstrated that,
depending on the traffic parameters, the GPRS network provides
similar effective throughput as compared to the circuit-based GSM
network while requiring significantly smaller number of air channels.
This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a description
of the GPRS network and a brief introduction of GPRS multiple
access method. Section 3 describes a packet data traffic model.
Section 4 presents the throughput and buffer analysis and Section 5
conclusions the paper.
2. General Packet Radio Service
GPRS is designed as an extension to the GSM network, which
provides an efficient way for transporting packet data through the
wireless channels. Figure 1 shows the GPRS network architecture. A
GPRS network consists of two types of GPRS Support Nodes
(GSNs), the Gateway GSN (GGSN) and the Serving GSN (SGSN).
GPRS supports two types of external Packet Data Networks (PDNs):
Internet Protocol (IP) and X.25 networks. These external PDNs
interface with the GPRS network through the GGSN. When a
Network Layer Packet Data Unit (N-PDU) from one of the support
PDNs arrives at the GPRS network, the GGSN forwards these N-
PDUs to the serving SGSN through an Intra-PLMN (Public Land
Mobile Network) IP Backbone Network.
The SGSN is the central component of a GPRS network, which
is responsible for delivering the N-PDUs to the target MTs as well as
other functions such as mobility management and session control. An
N-PDU arriving at the SGSN will first be compressed and partitioned
into smaller Logical Link control (LLC) frames. These LLC frames
are then forwarded to the Base Station Subsystem (BSS) using the
BSS GPRS Protocol (BSSGP). In addition, the SGSN is responsible
for handover, QoS management, and flow control, among others. The
detailed description of the GPRS network and protocol architecture
can be found in [1].
0-7803-5669-1/$10.00 (c) 1998 IEEE
Each SGSN is connected to a number of Base Station
Controllers (BSCs). The BSCs are responsible for partitioning the
LLC frames into fixed size Radio Link Control (RLC) blocks and to
schedule the transmission of these RLC blocks through the wireless
channels. Each BSC controls one or more Base Transceiver Stations
(BTSs), which interfaces with the MTs through the Radio channels.
The BSCs are connected to the SGSN through a Frame Relay
network.
In traditional circuit-switched GSM networks, each 200 KHz RF
channel is partitioned into eight logical channels using Time division
Multiple Access (TDMA) [2] technique. When a MT establishes a
call, the BSC assigns a logical channel to the MT for the duration of
the call. This technique is inefficient for carrying packet data traffic
that exhibits the ON/OFF.
In GSM networks that support GPRS, one or more logical
channels are permanently or dynamically allocated for carrying
packet data traffic. These logical channels are called Packet Data
Channels (PDCHs). The basic unit of transmission in a PDCH is a
radio block. Each radio block composes of four consecutive GSM
time slots and can be used to carry one RLC block. The time slots of
each PDCH are grouped into 52-time-slot multi-frames. Each multi-
frame contains 12 radio blocks and 4 unused time. Figure 2 shows the
structure of a 52 time-slot GPRS multi-frame.
Mobile originated packet transfer is achieved by a two-phase
procedure. During the first phase, the MT sends a packet-channel-
request message to the BSC through the Packet Random Access
Channel. On receiving this message, the BSC replies with a packet-
immediate-assignment message that allocates a number of uplink
radio blocks to the MT in a PDCH. During the second phase, the MT
sends a packet-resource-request message to the BSC these radio
blocks. This message includes the description of the uplink resource
requirement. The BSC than responses with a packet-resource-
assignment message.
The packet-resource-assignment message includes a list of
PDCHs that the MT may use for data transmission, and an Uplink
State Flags (USFs) for each PDCH. The USF is a three-bit value that
is used to indicate the availability of radio block to the MT. The MT
then constantly monitors the downlink radio blocks of the allocated
PDCHs. If the MT detects its USF in the downlink radio block header
of the corresponding PDCH, it may use the next uplink radio block in
this PDCH for data transfer.
There are two options for resource assignment. In the first case,
the MT is allowed to used the assigned PDCHs as long as it has
queued RLC blocks for transmission. The channel resource may be
released either by the MT or by the network when there is no more
queued data packets. In the second case, a limited number of radio
blocks are allocated to the MT. The MT must initiate another
resource request procedure if additional resource is required.
Mobile terminated packet transfer is initiated by the BSC using
a packet-resource-assignment message through the Packet Access
Grant Channel. This message includes a list of PDCHs that will be
used for downlink data transfer. It also assigns a Temporary Flow ID
(TFI) to the MT. The MT then monitors these PDCHs and receives
all radio blocks which contains its TFI in the header. For MTs not
actively transmitting and receiving data (i.e. in the standby state), the
network does not keep track of its exact cell location. As a result, a
paging procedure is required to locate the MT before the packet-
resource-assignment message can be delivered.
For both mobile originated or terminated packet data transfer,
once the resource assignment is complete, a scheduling algorithm is
used to allocate the available radio blocks to the MTs. A number of
such scheduling algorithms exist in the literature [3]. These include
FIFO, Round Robin, Fair Queueing, and Weighted Fair Queueing,
among others. In the analysis given in this paper, we assume that the
Fair Queueing scheduling algorithm is used.
3. Internet Traffic Model
Poisson process [4] and Markov Modulated Poisson Process
(MMPP) [5] was previously proposed for modeling of packet data
traffic. However, recent research [6] demonstrated that these models
do not capture some of the important characteristic of packet data
traffic. For example, the duration of the ON and/or OFF periods are
found to be heavy-tail distributed [6] which does not exhibit the
memoryless property of exponential distribution.
The heavy-tail distribution of the ON and/or OFF periods leads
to the self-similar [7] behavior of the aggregated traffic. Self-
similarity has resulted in a number of major issues in the provisioning
and engineering of packet data networks. To accurately predict the
arrival pattern of packet data traffic and to correctly provision
network resources, the underlying traffic model must be able to
capture this unique characteristic of packet data traffic.
For the analyses given in the paper, we assume that a GPRS
subscriber must set up a session before he/she can start transmitting
and receiving data. Once a session has been established, the
subscriber may engage in various services, such as WWW browsing
and E-Mail download. We assume that session arrival is a Poisson
process with arrival rate sessions/hour and the duration of each
session is exponentially distributed. It is demonstrated in [6] that
user-initiated sessions are well modeled by Poisson processes.
The packet arrival pattern within a session depends on the type
of service. Two of the most popular Internet applications are E-Mail
and WWW browsing. In the following, we will describe the E-Mail
and WWW traffic arrival models for an individual user.
B0 B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7 B8 B9 B10 B11
52 time slots
Unused time-slots
4 time slots
Figure 2: GPRS 52-Time-Slot Multi-Frame
Intra PLMN
IP backbone
IP
X.25
GGSN
SGSN
BSS
Frame
Relay
Figure 1: GPRS Network Architecture
Mobile
Terminal
0-7803-5669-1/$10.00 (c) 1998 IEEE
3.1 E-Mail Traffic Arrival Model
We assume that incoming messages of a user are stored at a
dedicated E-mail server. This E-mail server safe-keeps all messages
for the user in a mailbox until he/she logs on to the network and
retrieves the messages. In general, when the user runs the E-mail
application, the headers of the available messages are downloaded to
the computer from the E-mail server. The user will then scan through
the headers and download the required messages one after another.
After downloading each message, the user may read the message and
compose a reply to the sender. When the user finishes with the
current message, he/she will download the next message, and so on.
In [8], it is demonstrated that the arrival of messages to the
mailbox can be approximated by a Poisson process. Individual E-
mail user generates the ON/OFF traffic pattern in the downlink
during an E-mail session as shown in Figure 3(a). An ON period
represents the interval during a message downloaded. The OFF
period is the interval between the end and the beginning of two
consecutive message downloads. It represents user reading time.
Let x
e
and t
e
to be iid (independent and identically distributed)
random variables representing E-Mail message size and length of
OFF period, respectively. Based on empirical analysis of actual E-
Mail message [8], the probability distribution function of x
e
is:
Where c
1
=1.2~3.2, with mean 2.04, c
2
=0.31~0.46 with mean 0.37, k
1
=14.0~21.0 with mean 17.64, and k
2
=2.8~3.4 with mean 3.61. The
length of ON period is a function of message size and instantaneous
throughput available to the user. We assume the length of OFF
period, t
e
, follows the Pareto distribution with the probability
distribution function:
According to the Pareto distribution, the parameter k
e
is the minimum
duration of the OFF period. The parameter
e
relates to the degree of
the heavy-tail behavior (or the heavy-tailedness) of the OFF period.
Based on this model [8], k
e
= 30 ~ 60 seconds and
e
= 0.5 ~ 1.5.
3.2 WWW Traffic Arrival Model
In general, each user selectable link in a Web page involves one
or more Universal Resource Locator (URL) requests. When a user
submits an URL request, the WWW server executes a client program
that generates response to the user. Depending on the content of the
web page, additional requests may be generated by the client
program. For example, the client program may initiate a separate
request for each inline image. Each of these requests establishes a
new TCP connection to the MT. These TCP connections may overlap
each other or they may be in sequential order.
When all the requests related to the URL are complete, it will
take the user some time to read the information before initiating the
next request. Thus, we may capture the WWW traffic by a model
which consists of active and inactive periods. Where the active period
corresponds to the duration from the submission of the request by the
user to service completion. This active period consists of the
transmission time of the individual files and the active OFF time.
The active OFF time is the relatively short time interval between two
file receptions when the MT is processing the received Web page
component. The inactive OFF time is the time interval when the user
is reading the received information. It is the duration between the
completion of a service request and the beginning of the next service
request. Figure 3(b) shows the WWW traffic arrival pattern.
The WWW traffic model as described above follows the ON
and OFF pattern. The ON period represents the file transmission time
on the downlink. The OFF period represents the interval when there
is no data transmission. There are a number of studies [9] which
investigate the distribution of the download file size and the length of
the OFF periods. The ON time is a function of the file size and the
available downlink bandwidth. Let x
w
be an iid random variable that
represents the WWW file size. It was demonstrated that x
w
follows a
Pareto distribution with the probability distribution function [9]:
Where the minimum file size is k
w
= 1000 bytes or larger, and
the heavy-tailedness is
w
= 1.1 ~ 1.5.
The OFF period consists of two segments: active and inactive
OFF times. We consider an OFF period to be active if its duration is
less than a threshold value and inactive, otherwise. Let t
w
and t
w

to
be iid random variables that represent the active and inactive OFF
times, respectively, of a WWW session. As shown in [9], t
w
follows
the Weibull distribution with the probability distribution function:
Where a = 0.328 and b = 1.46. The inactive OFF time, t
w
, follows
the Pareto distribution with the probability distribution function:
Where the minimum inactive OFF time is k
w
= 1 second, and the
heavy-tailedness is
w
= 1.5. To determine the length of the active
e
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ON OFF ON OFF ON OFF ON
Begin message download
Finish message download
User begins reading message
Inactive period
User click User click Service
Complete
Active ON Active OFF Inactive OFF
Active period
(a)
(b)
Figure 3: (a) E-Mail and (b) WWW Traffic Arrivals within a User Session
0-7803-5669-1/$10.00 (c) 1998 IEEE
period, it is important to characterize the number of embedded
references in a Web page. This value represents the number of files
(in addition to the initial file) to be downloaded during an active
period. Based on [9], we assume the number of embedded references
in a Web page to have the asymptotically Pareto distribution with a
minimum k
f
= 1 file, and heavy-tailedness
f
= 2.43.
4. Throughput and Buffer Analysis
In this section, we present the throughput and buffer analysis of
the GPRS network based on the WWW and E-Mail traffic models as
discussed in Section 3. Table 1 gives the traffic parameters that we
employed for this analysis. In addition to the WWW and E-Mail
traffic models, we also consider a combined traffic model such that
50% of the sessions carry WWW traffic and the other 50% carry E-
Mail traffic.
Table 1: WWW and E-Mail Traffic Parameters:
Traffic models WWW E-Mail
# PDTCHs 4 and 8 4 and 8
File size Pareto with kw=2730.67,
w=1.2
c1=2.04, c2=0.37, k1=18.36,
k2=3.33
Active off time Weibull with a=0.382,
b=1.46
N/A
Inactive off time Pareto with k'w=1, 'w=1.5 Pareto with ke=30, e=1.5
Session length Exponential with mean 15
minutes
Exponential with mean 5
minutes
Session arrival Poisson with variable
arrival rate
Poisson with variable arrival
rate
# Embedded
References
Pareto with kf=1 and
f=2.43
N/A
In this analysis, we assume that the maximum size of the data
field in each LLC frame is 1024 bytes. Each LLC frame has a 10
bytes frame header. The amount of data carried in a LLC frame may
be smaller than 1024 bytes if it is the last frame of a network layer
packet. The size of a network layer packet is assumed to be 2048
bytes and the inter-arrival time of network layer packets within the
same burst is 200 ms.. The GSM coding scheme CS-3 is employed
such that each RLC block carries 36 data bytes excluding header and
trailer. This results in a channel throughput of 14 Kbps. The air-
interface Carrier-to-Interference ratio (C/I) is assumed to be 16 dB,
which results in a RLC Block Error Rate (BLER) of 0.02 [11]. When
a RLC block is lost, it will be retransmitted up to 3 times (total
number of transmission is 4). If one or more RLC blocks of a LLC
frame are lost, the LLC frame is considered to be incomplete and is
discarded. In this analysis, LLC frame retransmission is disabled. If
the LLC frame buffer is full when a LLC frame arrives, the LLC
frame is dropped immediately.
As described earlier, this simulation analysis captures two
performance measurements: the effective throughput and the LLC
frame drop rate. The effective throughput of a session is the ratio of
the total number of bytes successfully received by the MT to the total
duration of all ON periods. A session is considered to be ON when
one or more LLC frame destined for the MT is in the LLC queue at
the SGSN. The LLC frame drop rate is the ratio of the total number
dropped LLC frames to the total number of LLC frames arrived at the
SGSN.
Figure 4 shows the effective throughput for the three traffic
models (WWW, E-Mail, and Combined) for different session arrival
rates. When the session arrival rate is low, the number of
simultaneous sessions is small and the effective throughput is high.
As the session arrival rate increases, the number of simultaneous
sessions increases. These sessions must shares the available
bandwidth, which results in a reduction in the effective throughput.
However, since a session is make up or cycles of ON/OFF periods.
At any given time, only a fraction of the existing sessions are ON.
The multiplexing of several ON/OFF sessions in one or more shared
PDCHs results in effective throughput gain such that the effective
throughput per session is higher than the average throughput
available to each session. Here, the average throughput is defined as
the total throughput divided by the number of existing sessions. This
multiplexing gain is not available in circuit based GSM networks,
such as GSM High Speed Circuit Switched Data (HSCSD).
Table 2 tabulates the number of 14 Kbps circuit channels in a
HSCSD network required to achieve similar effective throughput
provided by a GPRS networks with 8 PDCHs under the WWW
traffic model. Based on HSCSD, each session is allocated one or
more channels for the duration of the session. As seen in Figure 4(a),
the GPRS network with 8 PDCHs can provide an effective
throughput of about 26 Kbps to each session under WWW traffic
with a session arrival rate of 18 sessions/hour. To provide similar
throughput under HSCSD, two 14 Kbps circuit channels must be
allocated to each session for its whole duration. Assuming a channel
blocking probability of 1%. An analysis using the Erlang B formula
0
14
28
42
56
70
84
0 20 40 60 80
(s es s io ns /ho ur)
8 PDTCHs
4 PDTCHs
0
14
28
42
56
70
84
98
112
0 100 200 300 400 500
(se s sions /hour)
8 PDTCHs
4 PDTCHs
0
14
28
42
56
70
84
98
0 20 40 60 80
(s es s ions /ho ur)
8 PDTCHs
4 PDTCHs
(a) (c) (b)
Figure 4: Effective Through for (a) WWW, (b) E-Mail, and (c) Combined Traffic Models.
(sessions/hour) (sessions/hour) (sessions/hour)
E
f
f
e
c
t
i
v
e

T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
K
b
p
s
)
E
f
f
e
c
t
i
v
e

T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
K
b
p
s
)
E
f
f
e
c
t
i
v
e

T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
K
b
p
s
)
8 PDCHs
4 PDCHs
8 PDCHs
4 PDCHs
8 PDCHs
4 PDCHs
0-7803-5669-1/$10.00 (c) 1998 IEEE
indicates that the total number of HSCSD circuit channels required to
achieve similar effective throughput is 20 (see last row in Table 2).
This mean that the GPRS network can achieve the required
throughput with less than half of the number of channels. It can be
seen in Table 2 that GPRS achieves close to 4 times the capacity of
HSCSD under the same effective throughput requirements. Similar
results have been obtained for other traffic models and are not
provided here because of space limitation.
Table 2: Channels Requirement under GPRS and HSCSD with
WWW Traffic Arrival Model
Session
arrival
Rate ()
Throughput
(Kbps)
Total # GPRS
PDCHs
required
Total #
HSCSD circuit
channels
required
4.5 68 8 25
9 47 8 28
13.5 34 8 27
18 26 8 20
Figure 5 shows the LLC frame drop rate for different traffic
models. For comparison purpose, we include a MMPP traffic model
that is similar to the E-Mail traffic model except that both the file size
and OFF duration are exponentially distributed. For this MMPP
model, we use an average file size of 36 Kbytes and an average OFF
duration of 90 seconds. Both the WWW and E-Mail models generate
traffic arrivals that exhibit the self-similar behavior [7] with Hurst
parameter 0.9 and 0.75, respectively. The Combined traffic model
has a Hurst parameter of 0.9.
In this analysis, we assume that there are four available GPRS
PDCHs. The session arrival rate for WWW, E-Mail, Combined, and
MMPP traffic models are 4, 120, 4, and 144 sessions/hour,
respectively. These values are selected to achieve similar starting
LLC frame drop rate at a buffer size of 1 MByte. The purpose of this
analysis is to demonstrate the impact of buffer size on different traffic
models. In Figure 5, it is demonstrated that the LLC frame drop rate
for the MMPP traffic model reduces significantly form above 1.0x10
-
2
to about 1.0x10
-5
by increasing the LLC frame buffer from 1 MB to
2.2 MB. However, the same reduction is not achieved for other traffic
models. For the WWW and the Combined traffic models, the LLC
frame drop rate remains close to 1.0x10
-2
after a nine times increase
in buffer size. For the E-Mail traffic model, the LLC frame drop rate
reduces to 1.0x10
-4
under the same increase in LLC frame buffer size.
This result demonstrates the effect of self-similarity on buffer
provisioning. The higher the Hurst parameters, and thus the self-
similarity level, of a given traffic source, the higher the expected
LLC frame drop rate. When the Hurst parameter of the traffic source
is high, the LLC frame drop rate is not very sensitively to increases in
buffer size. This means that increasing the buffer size is not an
effective solution for solving the problem of high LLC frame drop
rate. Two possible solutions can be used to address this problem. The
first one is to develop traffic shaping algorithms that reduce the self-
similarity level of a given traffic stream [12]. Another solution is to
develop flow control algorithms that throttles packet departure from
the source. Our current investigation focuses on these directions.
5. Conclusions
This paper presents a throughput and buffer analysis GPRS. Our
results demonstrated that GPRS achieves significant increase in
effective throughout as compared to HSCSD. This is possible due to
the ON/OFF nature of packet data traffic that results in multiplexing
gain. When compared to HSCSD, GPRS increases the capacity of the
GSM air channels by more than 300%.
However, packet data traffic generates very bursty traffic arrival.
The aggregation of a number of individual packet data traffic sources
results in a combined traffic that exhibits the self-similar behavior.
Some of the effects of similarity include high packet drop rate and
large buffer requirement. It is demonstrated that the packet drop rate
may be rather insensitive to increase in the available buffer space.
This means that increasing the buffer size is not an effective solution
to reduce packet drop rate. It will only lead to long packet queueing
delay. Methods for reducing the similarity of the incoming traffic is
necessary to reduce the packet drop rate and, thus, increases the
quality of service of the GPRS network.
References
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General Packet Radio Service (GPRS); Service Description; Stage 2,
ETSI GSM 03.60, Version 6.1.1, Aug. 1998.
[2] ETSI, Digital Cellular Telecommunications System (GSM Radio
Access Phase 3); Multiplexing and Multiple Access on the Radio Path,
ETSI GSM 05.02, Version 6.0.0, Jan. 1998.
[3] D. Stiliadis, Traffic Scheduling in Packet Switched Networks, Ph.D.
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[8] Y. Zhu, J. Ho and L. Beauchamp, Email Traffic Modeling at the
Access Link, Nortel Networks Technical Report, 1998.
[9] P. Barford and M. Crovella, Generating Representative Web
Workloads for Network and Server Performance Evaluation, Proc.
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[10] J. C. R. Bennett and H. Zhang, Hierarchical Packet Fair queueing
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[11] R. Ludwig and D. Turina, Link Layer Analysis of the General Packet
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[12] A. Erramilli, O. Narayan, and W. Willinger, Experimental Queueing
Analysis with Long-range Dependent Packet traffic, IEEE/ACM
Transactions on Networking, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp.209-223, April 1996.
1.0E-05
1.0E-04
1.0E-03
1.0E-02
1.0E-01
0 2 4 6 8 10
LLC Buffer Size (MB)
L
L
C

F
r
a
m
e

D
r
o
p

R
a
t
e
WWW
Combined
E-Mail
MMPP
Figure 5: LLC Frame Drop Rate
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