Teletraffic engineering is a necessary field in network planning to ensure that costs are minimised without compromising the quality of service delivered to the network user. This field of engineering is based on probability theory and can be used to analyse mobile radio networks as well as other telecommunication networks. Mobile radio networks have traffic issues that do not arise in connection with the fixed line PSTN.
Example: A mobile user may move from a cell area to an adjacent one during an ongoing call, thus invoking the handover procedure. During this procedure, radio resources of the originating cell are released while radio resources of the target cell are assigned to the call. From the traffic viewpoint, user mobility introduces hand-over blocking probability (i.e. the probability that a handover request is rejected due to lack of resources), and call dropping probability (i.e. the probability that an active call is terminated during handover).Teletraffic measurements of mobile traffic should take into account the effect of user mobility on traffic characteristics. Some important aspects of mobile traffic include the following concepts.
Reference: J.G.Markoulidakis, Traffic model for third generation cellular mobile telecommunications systems. http://www.telecom.ece.ntua.gr/~libero/REVIEW3.htm, Last accessed 13 February 2006.
Further reading: ITC, ITU-D SG2, Teletraffic Engineering Handbook. http://www.tele.dtu.dk/teletraffic/handbook/telehook.pdf.
