Summary

Recommendation ITU-T G.1023 establishes a framework for capacity assessment of packet data services in mobile networks.

Mobile network capacity is an underlying factor in all quality of service (QoS) aspects of a packet data-based mobile network due to the shared-resource properties of such networks. It is therefore desirable to achieve a basic understanding of related properties and corresponding performance indicators. Measuring network capacity takes, however, significantly more effort and resources, in the sense that a direct measurement of capacity requires a massive effort in terms of resources, which practically creates the requirement to use assessments.

Recommendation ITU-T G.1023 therefore provides a systematic approach to describe and characterize methods for assessment of packet data-based mobile networks and presents the appropriate framework.

Spatial resolution is an important element of this framework, i.e., the recognition that network capacity is not a quantity which is uniform over the entire network or large areas of it. Rather, due to the cellular nature of such networks, capacity, and therefore also QoS and quality of experience properties, are spatially different.