Real-Time HSPA Emulator for End-to-Edge QoS Evaluation in All-IP Beyond 3G Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

This paper is aimed at presenting the real-time High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) emulator that has been developed in the framework of the AROMA project. Real-time emulators allow reproducing realistic scenarios to test algorithms, strategies, protocols and applications under realistic conditions. Therefore, real-time emulators constitute a powerful tool to evaluate the end-user's Quality of Experience (QoE), which could not be achieved by means of off-line simulations. The presented emulator is integrated in the AROMA real-time testbed, which has been developed to provide a framework for demonstrating the benefits of the common radio resource management algorithms as well as the proposed end-to-edge Quality of Service (QoS) management techniques developed for all-IP beyond 3G heterogeneous wireless networks in the context of the AROMA project.