Data Queuing in GPRS/4G Networks Jerry Pylarinos Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras, Rion 26500, Patras, Hellas. Tel: +302610997301 gpyl@gmail.com Spiros Louvros Department of Telecommunication Systems & Networks, Technical Educational Institute of Messologi National road Nafpaktos –Antirio, Perioxi Varia, Nafpaktos slouvros@teimes.gr Stavros Kotsopoulos Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Patras, Rion 26500, Patras, Hellas. Tel: +302610997301 kotsop@ece.upatras.gr George Asimakopoulos Department of Telecommunication Systems & Networks, Technical Educational Institute of Messologi National road Nafpaktos –Antirio, Perioxi Varia, Nafpaktos gasimakop@gmail.com ABSTRACT The performance of radio resource allocation in GPRS network is critical for the dimensioning and the optimization of next generation 4G networks with GPRS capacity. Previous work has analyzed this problem, however in the present work a two dimension Markov chain, using guard channels for handover calls and priority for voice calls to pre-empt GPRS data packets is assumed. Moreover a queue is considered to be valid only for the pre-empted data packets. Keywords GPRS, 4G, voice pre-emption. 1. INTRODUCTION GPRS network is considered to be a complementary network to GSM, dedicated for data packet communications. Moreover in next generation cellular networks, like 4G, the GSM/GPRS is just an access network, figure 1. The general aspect is that high data access, through the 4G/3G and WiFi coverage, will be available in many non overlapping hotspot areas while the whole coverage area will provide data access through GPRS. The general idea is that a cellular data customer can use the resources of WLAN whenever possible in order to increase its data rates and to make use of all the available multimedia services without delays. Figure 1: The wireless cellular Radio Access environment for 4G networks Of course the deployment of the WLAN network is based on Hotspots architecture. Hence the coverage of WLAN network will be limited in special places, where most of the customers can use a laptop or a PDA to use the offered services. Such places are commercial centres, city centre areas like cafeterias or hotels, enterprises buildings or airports and finally crowded domestic areas. There is no need for full coverage of the whole geographical area of a city or a country, since in the areas of no WLAN coverage GPRS solution is enough to provide the mobility freedom to cellular customers with satisfactory moderate data rates. In such a case the cellular customer might start a session with the best network coverage, say WLAN in a hotspot area. While the customer is waiting, he can take advantage of the high bandwidth of WLAN in order to gain access to the offered services. As the customer moves away from the coverage area of the hotspot the end device detects the failure of service provision and seamlessly should switch the data flow to the next available data network, that is, GPRS. The important is that this flow switching is seamless to the end user, the data delay is the least Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee.