Douglas O'Neil

The use of SS7 and GSM to support high density personal communications

The authors present an organized method for quantifying the Signaling System 7 (SS7) traffic load associated with terminal mobility when the pan-European standard GSM is used for personal communication networks (PCNs). They use CCIR parameters for an extremely dense, outdoor center-city pedestrian environment to illustrate the possible heavy signaling load. Using the example parameters, the additional SS7 network burden is 4-11 times greater for cellular than for ISDN and 3-4 times greater for PCN than for cellular, depending on the visitor location register placement. The numerical results are very sensitive to assumptions on user mobility, cell size, and location area size. This highlights the need for careful investigation of these parameters in specific applications.<<ETX>>