On Effective Capacity in Time-Varying Wireless Networks

In some networks, the physical transmission capacity can vary unpredictably with time. This stochastic variation may degrade system performance, reducing the effective capacity of the network. Traditional performance modeling ignoring this variation may overestimate system performance. In this paper, the authors investigate the impacts from stochastic capacity characteristics, using simulation. They explore the effects of selected parameters, including the mean, variance, frequency, and correlation of capacity variation. The simulation results show that higher frequency and higher variance capacity changes have adverse impacts on effective capacity.