Quality of Service Management in GPRS-Based Radio Access Networks

In this article, the performance and capacity gain achievable with quality of service (QoS) management in packet switched radio networks based on the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) are examined. Both the functions defined in the GPRS specification for QoS support and implementation-specific strategies for subscriber- and application-based Connection Admission Control (CAC) and scheduling are introduced. The feasibility of QoS provisioning in mobile core networks with use of DiffServ compared to present IP technology realizing a pure Best-effort service is examined in addition. To achieve this, simulation results of GPRS performance and system measures for different load situations are produced with the simulation tool GPRSim that models the realistic traffic behavior of a GPRS network.