Mobile Traffic Assessment for 4G Network: Virtual Sample Region Approach

Abstract

As service traffic increases in cellular networks, the mobile network must expand their system capacity. It is important to balance between the volume of mobile traffic and the capacity of mobile system in terms of user experience and operation cost. There are two approaches to assess the balance of demand and supply in cellular network: single cell and national wide scale. Nevertheless, both methods are insufficient to evaluate the balance reasonably in real cellular network in terms of scale: too narrow or wide. As radio resources cannot be exchanged between cells, network operators must perform statistical management on traffic dense areas. This paper introduces the virtual sample region concept that is composed of set of traffic-intensive cells in metropolitan area. We evaluate mobile traffic and system capacity based on real measurement from live 4G system in Seoul, South Korea. In this paper we provide the measurement results of mobile traffic per 10 MHz in real top 10% traffic-intensive cells about 3 years. We also estimate spectral efficiency of virtual sample region using system level simulation, and evaluate system capacity using spectral reuse factor, 4G spectrum bandwidth, simulated spectral efficiency. The margin of 4G system capacity is estimated about 30% in the last three years.