Performance Evaluation of CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO Rev A/ Rev B Network Muhammad Naveed Mughal and Muhammad Ali* Electrical Engineering Department, University of Engineering & Technology (UET), Lahore, Pakistan *Corresponding author: m.ali@uet.edu.pk Received: 04 November 2015 Accepted: 30 September 2016 Abstract CDMA2000 1x EVDO Rev A is a 3rd Generation (3G) wireless solution for high-speed mobile Internet access (also known as IS 856-A). This paper provides insight into key enhancements of 3G EV-DO Revision A and Revision B which are not previously reported and demonstrated through experimentation and measurements. It provides statistics of EV-DO Rev A under different measurement environments and its comparison for performance evaluation. The results of this paper can be useful for building EV-DO simulators as well as preparing correct/fine-tuned simulation model for 3G EV-DO Rev A/ Rev B. Introduction Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) 1x EV-DO Rev A [1] has been finalized by the 3GPP2 (3G partnership project 2) and has been published by TIA (Telecommunication Industry Association) as IS-856-A. As per statistics updated on 1 st August 2016 [2], 314 telecom operators had deployed CDMA 1x EV-DO networks in 118 countries/territories including 302 commercial 1x networks and 175 EV-DO Rev A and 12 EV- DO Rev B networks worldwide. CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO Revision 0 was a high rate wireless packet data system (2.4 Mbps/153 kbps for downlink/uplink) having improved forward link capacity and coverage over traditional CDMA 1x system (IS-95/ IS-2000). The rapid growth of EV-DO customers is observed in recent years due to amassed demand of high-speed Internet access over a wireless link, includes delay sensitive applications (video telephony, wireless gaming, VoIP) as well as downlink demanding applications (file transfers ,web browsing). EV-DO Rev A To cope up with new low latency applications, few enhancements approved by 3GPP2 in CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rel 0 (IS-856) resulting in a new standard CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev A (IS-856-A). These enhancements in IS-856 Rev A to meet new applications’ requirements are as follows:  Hybrid automatic repeat request (H-ARQ) is implemented at a uplink physical layer in addition to the introduction of higher order modulation schemes (QPSK and 8PSK) resulting higher uplink data rate up to 1.8 Mbps in comparison of 153.6 kbps in Rel. 0  In 1x EV-DO, Rise over thermal (ROT) is measured periodically during the silence period, when no access terminal (AT) is allowed to transmit. ROT is an indicator of sector loading and system stability. ROT operating point can be set to adjust sector throughput and capacity. In 1x EV-DO Rev A, further improvement can be achieved in ROT by decreasing the delay in ROT control loop using quick reverse activity bit (QRAB), updated in every slot (after 1.66 ms) instead of per frame (after 26.66 ms) in Rel. 0.  To support low latency applications and downlink intensive applications in 1x EV-DO Rev A, some key enhancements are done on forward physical and media access control (MAC) layers. o At forwarding physical layer, short packets (128, 256, 512 bits) are introduced for low latency applications as well as to achieve packing efficiency, while large packet (5120 bits) to support higher data rates and bigger payloads. o At forwarding MAC Layer, following enhancements are implemented:  Packet division multiple access (PDMA): In addition to time division multiplexing (TDM), transmission and opportunistic scheduling under fairness constraint, an access network (AN) may serve multiple ATs within the same physical layer packet results in improved packing efficiency and improved latency performance. Use of PDMA allows 1x EV- DO Rev A to support Multi-User Packet (MUP) containing data for multiple ATs.  1x EV-DO Rev A allows flexible mapping between the requested Data Rate Control (DRC) index and transmitted packet size/data rate.  Adaptive server selection: In 1x EV-DO Rev A, AT uses Data Source Control (DSC) channel to provide an early indication of serving cell changes to AN. Due to the prior knowledge of the instant of server changes, transmit delay is minimized.  Null-rate conversions support in 1x EV-DO Rev A. Null-rate DRC sent by AT can be mapped to transmission formats (256, 16, 1024), (512, 16, 1024) and (1024, 16, 1024) which is used in MUP. The peak data rates of downlink/uplink are 3.1 Mbps/1.8 Mbps in EV-DO Rev A and 9.3 Mbps/5.4 Mbps in EV-DO Rev B Phase I. However, the user-experienced application layer throughput has not been much reported for these EV-DO networks. In CDMA 2000 1x EV-DO Rev A, many enhancements have been done to decrease latency as compared to EV-DO Rel. 0. However, due to the time-variant behavior of wireless channels (poor radio conditions) and support of mobility feature, some losses are still observed which could decrease the throughput. Related Work NUST Journal of Engineering Sciences, Vol. 9, No. 1, 2016, pp. 23-28 NUST Publishing, © (2016), ISSN: 2070-9900