Part Four
Simulators for Wireless Systems
Introduction
Useful modeling in the context of wireless networks is in general a difficult task, which requires careful investigations of many different parameter settings and a design that tries to avoid leading to potentially wrong conclusions. “System-level modeling” is particularly demanding in this sense, because, in addition to the design requirements, the computational complexity plays a crucial role.
So what is system-level modeling all about? One thing that emerges when investigating the term “system level” is that it is quite extensively1 used in the literature. As a matter of fact, every comprehensive investigation of a technical system – not only in the context of a cellular system – may be denoted system-level analysis. Examples are electronic design methodology, virtualization for operating systems, hardware – software co-design for Very High Speed Integrated Circuits (VHSIC), or network synthesis. In the scope of this book, however, the term “system-level model” describes:
A model capable of representing the physical layer of a wireless transmission system in an abstract, yet accurate, way that is computationally less complex to evaluate than computing all the algorithms involved in the physical layer processing in their full detail, and can be described by a low number of parameters.
Given this rather conceptional definition, what are system-level models needed for? Usually, physical-layer simulations are used to identify ...
