Quantitative Comparison of the Efficiency and Scalability of the Current and Future LTE Network Architectures

Abstract

The core architecture of current mobile networks does not scale well to cope with future traffic demands owing to its highly centralized composition. Typically, it is believed that decentralization of the network architecture would be a sustainable approach to deal with ever growing amount of mobile data traffic. Nevertheless, the decentralization strategy of network architecture has not been properly examined through quantitative performance studies. Given that LTE will be the leading mobile networking technology in the coming 5-10 years, we conduct a hybrid study model to compare performance of current and future (decentralized) LTE network architectures. Particularly, our analysis presents numerical results quantifying impact of the number of attached nodes on the load at network routers and links, on the latency, and on the processing cost of the user's data and control planes. Analytical results demonstrate that decentralization of the LTE network architecture achieves higher performance compared to the current architecture and improves the latency and cost of data packet delivery more than 10 and 6 times, respectively. Furthermore, it is also observed that GTP outperforms PMIP for all studied performance metrics in the decentralized architecture and provides about twofold better latency and cost for data packet delivery and roughly 6 times lower data traffic load on the network routers.

Spectrum Gap Analysis With Practical Solutions for Future Mobile Data Traffic Growth in Malaysia

“…Thus, average network utilization is one of the main considered metrics in the proposed forecasting spectrum model. The fourth metric influencing the forecasted spectrum is the spectrum efficiency growth (SEG), which is one of the significant metrics that is normally enhanced when a new technology is coming, almost double than the previous technology; as illustrated in [66], [71], and [72]. This growth contributes to the surge in mobile data demands.…”

“…Spectrum efficiency is usually enhanced further when a new technology is coming [66], [71], [72]. The main parameters that determine the spectrum efficiency growth are the Modulation Scheme (MS), Sectors Number (SN) and Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) scheme (e.g.…”