Hi everyone, Today I’m going to talk about the mobile network technology under the network performance category. When talking about the mobile networks, the number of mobile devices are increasing daily. As fore casted by the IDC reports, human population will be about 7.5 billion by 2020 and the number of mobile devices such as smart phones, tablets, laptops, etc. will be around 20 billion. So it’s about at least 2 devices for every person. This shows the popularity of mobile networks in the modern era.
So let’s turn our conversation towards performance of the various cellular technologies, such as GSM, CDMA, HSPA, and LTE.
THE G FAMILY
When talking about the mobile networks, we can’t forget about G’s. There are different technologies called as 1G, 2G, 3G and so on. These are known as G’s. With the time, they have been evolved to where there are now. Let’s see a small comparison between each of them.
From the above chart we can see that data rate and peak is the main difference between each of this technology. Also we can see some factors which will decide the performance of networks regardless of the standard. They are as below,
- Their configuration of the network
- The number of active users in a given cell
- The radio environment in a specific location
- The device in use
- Other factors that affect wireless performance
The above chart shows a clear separation between the data rate and latency of each network. Under these generations, we can see some technologies too. For example CDMA, HSPA, LTE, etc. Now let’s see the popularity of these technologies in America.
Now let’s do a small comparison between HSPA+, LTE and LTE-Advanced like below,
RADIO RESOURCE CONTROLLER (RRC)
Both 3G and 4G networks have a unique feature that is not present in tethered and even
WiFi networks. The Radio Resource Controller (RRC) mediates all connection management between the device in use and the radio base station. Understanding why it exists, and how it affects the performance of every device on a mobile network, is critical to building high-performance mobile applications. The RRC has direct impact on latency, throughput, and battery life of the device in use.
As the name implies, the Radio Resource Controller assumes full responsibility over
scheduling of who talks when, allocated bandwidth, the signal power used, the power
state of each device, and a dozen other variables. Simply put, the RRC is the brains of
the radio access network. Want to send data over the wireless channel? You must first
ask the RRC to allocate some radio resources for you. Have incoming data from the
Internet? The RRC will notify you for when to listen to receive the inbound packets.
When talking about the performance of mobile networks, it depends on the evaluation criteria. Here are some examples for evaluation criteria,
- Importance of battery performance vs. network performance.
- Per user and network-wide throughput performance.
- Latency and packet jitter performance.
- Cost and feasibility of deployment.
- Ability to meet government and policy requirements.
- And dozens of other and similar criteria.
According to those criteria we can do a performance analysis to find out the performance differences between each technologies. Here is an example analysis.
Hope now you have an idea about mobile networks. See you soon with another topic. Thank You!