The Effect of Heterogeneous Traffic Distributions on Load Balancing in Mobile Communications: An Analytical Model

This paper investigates the load balancing problem in an environment of heterogeneous traffic distributions. An analytical model is proposed to determine the effect of heterogeneous traffic distributions on load balancing, in which a generic measure of load balancing level (LBL) that is a function of traffic type coefficient (TYC) and call blocking probability of cells is to analyze the expected level of the load balance. We consider both voice traffic and data traffic to determine which kind of traffic has the greater effect. The performance of cellular systems with sectorization is evaluated; they are normal case (N) of homogeneous distribution and linear case (L) of heterogeneous distribution. The analysis results indicate that the TYC has a significant effect on the accommodation capacity, in which voice calls outperform data calls because the LBL can easily distinguish between normal and linear distributions. Load balancing can be achieved more easily for voice only traffic than for data only traffic. Sectorization is more effective in achieving load balancing in the scenario of the heavier loads than in the lighter loads. The paper results are useful for network planning to optimize the channel allocation for different traffic type’s distribution.