Reliability and Survivability Analysis for UMTS Networks: An Analytical Approach

Reliability and survivability are the two important attributes of cellular networks. In the existing literature, these measures were studied through the simulation. In this paper, the authors construct an analytical model to determine reliability and survivability attributes of third generation and beyond Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems (UMTS) networks. Hierarchical architecture of UMTS networks is modeled using stochastic models such as Markov chains, semi-Markov process, reliability block diagrams and Markov reward models to obtain these attributes. The model can be tailored to evaluate the reliability and survivability attributes of other beyond third generation cellular networks such as All-IP UMTS networks and CDMA2000.