HSDPA – Page 7 – WirelessMoves

HSDPA Performance Of Vodafone’s 3G Network in Italy Has Me Puzzled

Back I am in Italy for a while. I’ve grown quite accustomed to the great performance of the TIM HSDPA network, which I’ve described in a number of previous posts. This time around, I set out to test the Vodafone HSDPA network in Rome and to compare it with the results achieved in TIM’s (Telecom Italia Mobile) network. The results were quite a surprise.

I had two SIM cards to test the network. For the first tests, I used my German Vodafone SIM card and a Roamer WebSession, described in more detail here, to establish an Internet connection. As already experienced in the SFR network in France, file download speeds were capped at around 45 kBytes/s. While already quite good it falls far short of 160 kBytes/s that are reachable with my category 12 Sierra Wireless 850 HSDPA card in the TIM network.

In France I was quite uncertain if and where the speed was throttled down. With the help of the Vodafone Italy network, I can now add a further piece to the puzzle which unfortunately raises more questions then it answers. To find out more, I bought a local Vodafone prepaid SIM card for direct access to the Internet and not via the GGSN of Vodafone in Germany used by the German Vodafone SIM card. To my great surprise the download speed of the file was almost the same as with the German SIM card. In the IP packet inter-spacing diagram (for an introduction of how to interpret the diagram see here), however, the download of the same file with the two different SIM cards in the same network looks completely different. As can be seen in the first graph on the right side, the file download via the German Web Session in the Italian Vodafone network shows IP packet inter-spacing mostly around the 30 ms line. A clear but not yet conclusive indication for throttling. With the Italien SIM card however, most packets of the same file are transmitted with a packet inter-spacing time of 10 ms as can be seen on the left side of the graph. So the transmission would be much faster if it were not for the randomly distributed packet inter-spacing of quite a lot of packets between 50 ms and 200 ms. To be honest, I have no idea why some packets take such a long time to arrive. I don’t think it can be RLC retransmissions as the automatic retransmission of packets discarded by the Node-B’s HARQ process usually takes around 80 to 100 milliseconds. Also these inter-spacings were not caused by IP layer retransmissions.

More clues

I then went on to do a direct comparison of the performance of the TIM network and the Italian Vodafone network by downloading two files from different servers to exclude the possibility that the Vodafone network has a problem with the connection to one file server. The result is shown in the second graph. On the left, the download speed for file 1 and file 2 are shown for the Vodafone network. Note the constantly changing top speeds. Afterwards I replaced the Vodafone SIM card with the TIM SIM card in the wireless card and performed the same downloads in the TIM network. The result is shown on the right side of the graph. The throughput is fairly constant and much higher than in the Vodafone network. When looking into the Wireshark trace the Vodafone throughput suffers from two things. First, the random packet inter-spacing times described above. Second, I have observed IP layer retransmissions every couple of seconds which also greatly reduce the download speed. The TIM network does not suffer from any of those.

Conclusions

As I repeated the tests over several days and at different times of the day a temporary error or network overload can be excluded as the reason. There are two likely causes for the problems observed in the Vodafone network. The most probable one is that there is an incompatibility between my Sierra Wireless 850 HSDPA card and Vodafone’s HSDPA network. It’s still early days for HSDPA so I would not be surprised if this were the case. Another possible cause could be that Vodafone has a big IP routing problem somewhere in the network. A good way to verify this would be to repeat the tests with a different HSDPA card or mobile phone. If the situation improves it’s an interoperability issue. If not, well, then it could still be both.

Vodafone Websessions with SFR in France

Spring is one of the best times of the year to be at the Côte d’Azur in France. While the weather and landscape is great, France is really missing attractive prices for Internet access over 3G. Not really affordable for post-paid customers, nothing is available for pre-paid customers at all. A good opportunity to use my Vodafone Germany prepaid SIM card for Internet access via the WebSessions roaming offer.

Downlink Speeds

Vodafone’s partner network in France is SFR and according to their web page, they’ve got HSDPA deployed in some parts of the network. Accordingly my speed expectations where high. And indeed, when I activated the 3G connection my data card showed that HSDPA is available in the network. Speed tests performed over several days revealed however, that the downlink speed is artificially limited to around 45 kBytes/s. The limitation is certainly not the air interface as the signal strength was good and speeds I measured in Germany and Italy were much higher.

It’s hard to tell from a users point of view exactly where the bottleneck is. It could be that Voda’s Home Location Register (HLR) in Germany and SFRs SGSN in France can not exchange the QoS profile correctly which subsequently leads to the throttling of my connection. It could also be that there is a limitation on the IP link used for forwarding my packets between the SFR network and the Vodafone Germany network. It’s also possible that the SFR SGSN or the Vodafone GGSN is unilaterally limiting my speed. In practice this means that HSDPA does not give me a great advantage in the SFR network over a 3G UMTS device as the speeds are the same. Due to this I was not sure if the connection was HSDPA at all. Subsequent tests described below showed, however, that the data card really got an HSDPA and not UMTS bearer.

Uplink Speeds

After getting a 384 kbit/s uplink bearer in Italy and Germany I was also disappointed about the ‘meager’ uplink speed of only 128 kbit/s in the SFR network. It’s likely that this is no interoperability or throttling problem but a general network limitation of the SFR radio network. Either they haven’t activated the higher bearer option or it’s not yet available in the current software version of their radio network. Whichever it is they should consider upgrading or switching on the option as the difference is remarkable.

Round Trip Delay Times

One of the indicators that the data card got an HSDPA bearer and not a UMTS bearers were the round trip delay times. With the data card I got a round trip time of about 170 ms. HSDPA usually delivers a round trip time to an external host of around 120 ms (100 ms to the first hop). The additional delay is most likely due to international roaming which means that my data is tunneled from SFR into Vodafone Germany’s network before entering the Internet via Vodafone’s GGSN. With a Nokia N93 3G ‘only’ terminal I got round trip times of around 380 ms. I am not quite sure why there are an additional 200 ms of dealy as UMTS is usually only around 50 ms slower.

Radio Ressource Management

On the positive side I noted that the HSDPA radio resource management was more advanced than what I experienced in the TIM network in Italy and the Vodafone network in Germany. While the HSDPA bearer is active, the above mentioned round trip times to an external host of about 170 ms can be observed. In Cell_FACH state, which TIM and Voda’s network in Germany might not support yet, round trip delay time s were around 360 ms. This reduced activity state was only entered after around 45 seconds. After about 60 seconds the connection is put into Idle, Cell_PCH or URA_PCH state from which it takes around 800 ms to get back into active state. This is a lot quicker then the 2 seconds observed in Vodafone’s network in Germany and TIM’s network in Italy.

Skype, VoIP and IPSec

I tried Skype and my companies VoIP client over both HSDPA and UMTS and got crystal clear connections. Also, my IPSec tunnel worked fine between the notebook and my company. Very well!

Wifi competition

Except for the artificially throttled speed, my experiences in the SFR network with the HSDPA card were very positive. I should also note, however, that some Wifi operators such as Orange have moved forward a bit as well and are now offering 10 hours online for 15 euros. The 10 hours can be distributed over 30 days. For 15 euros, one can stay online for several days if the connection is only used for a couple of hours a day. For me a Vodafone 24h WebSession for 15 Euros is still better because I am online for more than 10 hours a day. Also, I need access at different locations throughout the day which is difficult with Wifi hotspots. People with less online time and stationary use, however, might find a 10h over 30 days for the same price more attractive. Also, they are not limited to 50MB of traffic per WebSession Vodafone intends to introduce in September.

P.S. For more articles on this topic, click on the HSDPA link next to the date below

Mobile Internet Advertisment in Austria

When it comes to mobile technology, Austria is usually the place where things happen first. Not surprising therefore, that Mobile Internet offers are not only on the front page of most mobile operators web sites but also being marketed out in the open now. Take a look at the picture on the left. When I was in Austria recently, there was an advertisement of ONE for their H.U.I. mobile Internet access offer at almost every bus stop I passed. T-Mobile is also putting large advertising banners in cities to market their latest offer of €0.- basic charge and 10 cents per Megabyte of HSDPA traffic (post paid).

A reason for promoting the mobile Internet so fiercely these days might be that the operators don’t have have much to advertise for anymore in the voice domain since Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO’s) have caused a landslide in prices for voice minutes.

One of the things still missing in Austria is Internet access via prepaid SIMs. Let’s hope that will follow soon as well. Some German MVNO’s have set a good example.

Are Virtual COM Ports Fast Enough for HSDPA, WIMAX And Other Wireless Broadband Technologies?

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately with my Sierra Wireless HSDPA data card for my notebook which reaches speeds I still have difficulties to believe that they are possible over a wireless network. While many people probably prefer data cards for wireless Internet access I’d rather like to use my mobile phone to connect the notebook to the Internet. This is because I use connected applications both on the mobile phone and the notebook and don’t want to have two subscriptions for mobile data access. While the data card acts like a network adapter and thus has no speed limitation on the interface between the data card and the notebook, mobile phones simulate a modem over a serial port, also called a COM port. The question I thus had was if those virtual COM ports have the same speed limitations as their real counterparts. If so, this could be a problem for mobile phones that support HSDPA, WiMAX and other future wireless broadband technologies which can deliver higher data rates than real COM ports can transport.

The maximum data rate that can be set for a real or a virtual COM port is 921.600 bits/s. This is far too slow for modern HSDPA mobiles that support downlink speeds of up to 3.6 MBit/s. For real serial ports this limit is real as the speed setting in the modem dialog translate into commands to a UART chip to send bits over a serial wire at exactly this speed. Most if not all high end phones today, however, have no serial connector anymore. Instead they use USB for communicating with a PC. In order not to modify the dial up networking software of operating systems, serial port emulations over USB are used. To the dial up network softwae it looks like the ‘modem’ in the mobile phone is connected via a serial port. The question now is whether the same speed limitations apply to these virtual COM ports over USB as well. At least in the dial up networking menus, the maximum speed that can be set for them is also 921.600 bits/s. USB is much faster than HSDPA or any other wireless wide area network. Even USB 1.1 can already handle a speed of up to 12 MBit/s, so physically no limitation exists.

As I don’t have an HSDPA capable mobile phone yet I did the next best thing and used a Nokia 6680 UMTS mobile. Instead of setting the COM port speed to 921.600 bit/s, which is twice as high as what UMTS can deliver, I set it to 19.200 bit/s which equals a maximum transfer rate of 2.4 kBytes/s. This is much less than what a UMTS connection can deliver, about 40 kBytes/s. Then, I established a UMTS connection, started a download of a big file and monitored the throughput. As can be seen in the picture on the left, the COM port speed is set to 19.2 kbit/s = 2.4 kBytes/s. The download rate, however is 40 kByte/s.

This proves that the speed setting for a virtual COM port has no influence on the actual speed of the data transfer over the virtual connection. Thus, if both the driver on the PC and the mobile phone support higher speeds over the virtual COM port, HSDPA and WiMAX speeds will be supported without a need for modifying the dial up networking software of the operating system. Very well, so I am looking forward to testing things with a real HSDPA mobile phone!

How LTE Deals With Limited Uplink Power

In a previous blog entry I’ve been looking at how WiMAX and HSDPA allow several mobiles to simultaneously use the uplink. This is necessary as the power output of a terminal is much lower than that of a base station. Due to this restriction a single terminal can not use the total uplink bandwidth of a channel. The only way to compensate for this is to allow several mobiles to transmit at the same time. After writing this article a reader asked how LTE (Long Term Evolution), the successor of HSDPA/HSUPA, deals with this. So here we go:

In downlink direction, LTE is based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technology, quite similar to WiMAX (802.16e). While WiMAX uses OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) modulation in uplink direction, it was decided by 3GPP to go a different way for LTE. Here, SC-FDMA (Single Carrier – Frequency Division Multiple Access) will be used. It took me quite a while to figure out the basics of SC-FDMA but I think I’ve finally got the basics right and have posted the results of my research here.

So why doing it differently?

It looks like while OFDMA has many advantages it suffers from bad Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR). Again, I didn’t find an easy to understand explanation of PAPR and it’s implications on the web. Therefore I decided to do some of my own research and I am very thankful to a number of readers who have helped in the process. The results are presented here.

Deep Inside The Network: How UMTS And WiMAX Deal With Limited Uplink Power

Lately, I’ve been thinking a bit how different wireless systems deal with the fact that the power output of a mobile phone is much lower than the power output of the base station. In practice this means that uplink data rates per mobile phone can not reach the same level as in the downlink. Most systems today use a different frequency ranges for uplink and downlink (FDD, frequency division duplex) with the same bandwidths. This means that if only a single mobile can transmit in uplink direction at a time, bandwidth is wasted due to the power limitation.

UMTS / HSUPA / E-DCH

3G networks use Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) in both uplink and downlink. This means that several mobile phones can send their data at the same time to the base station, each with a different code. The base station knows the code of each terminal and is thus able to extract the simultaneous data streams from the single incoming signal. This way, the data rates of all mobiles can be added up and the uplink is used very efficiently, despite the limitation in uplink power. A single mobile is not able to fully use the available bandwidth due to the power limit. If several terminals communicate with the base station, however, as is usually the case, the uplink frequency band can be used to its limit. This method applies to both 3G UMTS and 3.5G HSUPA (aka E-DCH) as they both use dedicated bearers.

WiMAX

The WiMAX air interface uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in both uplink and downlink direction. Basically, the OFDM approach splits the total available bandwidth into independent sub-channels and data is sent simultaneously over these sub-channels. As UMTS/HSPA terminals, WiMAX terminals are also power limited and therefore face the same problem. Contrary to the code division approach described above, WiMAX assigns different sub-channels in the uplink to different terminals. Thus, each terminal can focus it’s power on fewer sub-channels. In other words a terminal can put more power in a sub-channel if it doesn’t have to use all of them. Other sub-channels not used by the terminal are assigned to other terminals. This means that several terminals in effect communicate with the base station in uplink direction simultaneously.

The comparison shows that both UMTS and WiMAX have interesting ways to ensure that several mobile terminals can communicate with a base station simultaneously in the uplink direction to counter the restricted power output and to use uplink resources efficiently. The way it is done, however, is quite different.

Vodafone WebSessions Tested At HSDPA Speeds

A couple of weeks ago, Vodafone Germany announced during the CeBit that they will launch/lower their data roaming prices for their WebSession offer. On both prepaid and post paid Vodafone Germany SIM cards, WebSessions can be bought for €14.95 for a 24 hour period while roaming in many countries (for a list see below). While unlimited for now, Vodafone’s fine print says that a web session will be limited to 50 MB of data traffic starting in Seprember 2007. Definitely not on the cheap side for private travelers, the price will work for many business travelers when abroad for a couple of days. As I am one of those it was time to get a Voda prepaid SIM and give it a try.

How To Get A SIM

Apart from being very flexible with a prepaid SIM and not having to pay a monthly fee or being bound for a certain period a prepaid SIM additionally offers assurance that I will not come home one day to find a €3000.- invoice because I mis-configured my kit. This is not unheard of… As Vodafone Germany wanted €20.- for a prepaid starter kit, I decided to give eBay a try and got one for €2.-. The SIM card included €10.- worth of calls and Internet access, enough for a first test. Important note: As far as I know only German Vodafone SIM cards support WebSessions.

How to Connect

The most important thing with the WebSession offer is to use the correct Access Point Name (APN) when connecting. For this offer it is "event.vodafone.de". If a different APN is used other fees will apply for the connection so be careful. After establishing the connection any web page access is redirected to the WebSessions portal page of Vodafone. Here, one can either select to begin a new session or browse the Vodafone.de page for free. Unlike advertised, the only payment option I had was to deduct the price for the WebSession from the prepaid account.

Once opening the web session is confirmed on the portal page the connection is put into transparent mode and full Internet access is possible. Before being forwarded to the initially selected page the portal tries to open a popup window to show the remaining online time. This fails in both Firefox and the Internet Explorer with standard pop-up blocker options enabled. No harm done, the Internet connection works anyway. However, it might be useful to have this information. To allow the pop-up window to open, the pop-up prevention can be manually deactivated in the browsers settings for the portal URL only.

Performance

For my tests I used the HSDPA notebook card I already used for my HSDPA tests in Italy. As in the Italien TIM network, HSDPA performance in the German Vodafone network were superb with maximum data rates of 180 kBytes/s, which is around 1.6 MBit/s. This is the maximum speed supported by the card. Round trip delay times were at around 100 ms and I had the same 2 seconds delay after some time of inactivity, just as in Italy. So it’s likely that TIM and Vodafone Germany use the same radio network manufacturer, who is most likely Ericsson. The maximum uplink speed was a remarkable 384 kbit/s.

While talking about performance I’d also like to note that my desk is about 300 meters and two concrete walls away from the 3G base station. Therefore my reception conditions were excellent and unlike in Italy with slightly less favorable reception conditions, changes in antenna orientation had no big impact on throughput speed.

I also used the WebSession with an N93 connected to the PC and also quickly connected to the Swiss UMTS network which is available when I am on my penthouse veranda. All worked as it should, I am very satisfied!

Logging In and Out, eMail, VoIP and IPSec

A WebSession can be left and entered again as often as one likes while the clock is ticking. I connected and disconnected several times to check this feature one out and it works flawlessly as well. After every login, the portal page is shortly visited for the pop-up box to open up to show the remaining online time. Afterwards, the browser is immediately redirected to the requested page. EMail SMTP and POP3 works as well over the connection and my IPSec connection establishment to my company was working. Even Skype calls worked without a glitch despite Vodafone stating in their fine print that VoIP calls are blocked.

Automatic Web Page and Picture Compression

The only thing that I don’t like is the automatic picture compression on web pages Vodafone performs. While it helps to reduce the total transfer volume it’s not required to improve page download times over HSDPA. After all, the HSDPA connection is much faster than my ADSL line. I heard that it’s possible to deactivate the automatic picture compression with the Vodafone software that comes with their branded HSDPA cards. As I don’t use any Vodafone software or hardware I can’t change the setting. However, I can deactivate split tunneling in my IPSec client. Afterwards all data traffic is sent through the encrypted tunnel to the corporate network. This prevents the transparent web proxy in the Vodafone core network to touch the pages and pictures and things look as they should. Not a perfect solution to the problem but it works for me.

Supported Roaming Countries

Belgium (Proximus), Denmark (TDK), Finland (Elisa), France (SFR), Greece (Vodafone), U.K. (Vodafone), Ireland (Vodafone), Italy (Vodafone), Lichtenstein (Mobilkom), The Netherlands (Vodafone), Austria (Mobilkom), Portugal (Vodafone), Switzerland (Swisscom), Spain (Vodafone) and Germany (Vodafone).

Summary

For me, WebSessions are a great way to stay connected while traveling in other countries especially now that another program I previously used abroad has expired. It would be nice if the price comes down a bit more to also make it attractive for non-business travelers and if there was an easier way to deactivate picture compression. However, I can live with both drawbacks for the moment. I also used a WebSession with the built in applications of my Nokia N93. You can read about this in the next blog entry.

Insight Into Who Backs WiMAX And Who Opposes It

Ericsson recently announced that they will stop their WiMAX development and that they will instead accelerate their LTE development. The Register has taken up on this and has published a very interesting article by Wireless Watch on which companies are pushing WiMAX and which companies are rather opposed. So if you are interested in the technical and political quarrels between 3G, 3.5G, 3.9G, 4G, UMTS, HSPA, WiMAX, LTE and UMB this one is a must read.

The Big Supporters:

Motorola
Nortel
Samsung
Huawei
ZTE

The Big Reluctant Followers:

Alcatel-Lucent
Nokia Siemens Networks

The Big Opposers:

Ericsson
Qualcom

My personal opinion: I think it’s good to have different technologies out there in the market that compete with each other. It speeds up development and it offers new starters in the wireless operator world possibilites which have not existed so far. As I discussed in more detail here, I think the consumer will benefit from this no matter in which direction the market will go.

HSDPA Performance in Operational Networks Part 4

My recent trip to Italy produced quite a large amount of measurement data while I was using Telecom Italia Mobile’s (TIM) HSDPA network for everyday work and pleasure. In part 1, I’ve been giving a general overview of the performance of HSDPA in an operational network. Part 2 then focused on analyzing IP packet inter-spacing and revealed a number of interesting details of the HSDPA MAC layer. In part 3 I showed how antenna position and placement can have a tremendous impact on performance. This part now picks up the thread and shows how the HSDPA MAC layer adapts to the antenna position changes tested in part 3.

The picture on the left shows the packet inter-spacing diagram generated from the same data as the throughput graph presented in part 3. If you haven’t read part 2 which gives an introduction of how to read this type of diagram I strongly recommend you to do so before reading on. The throughput graph in part 3 starts off with a speed of around 500 kbit/s. In the packet inter-spacing graph the reason for this slow speed becomes apparent. Instead of most packets being transmitted with a inter-spacing of 10 ms or less, most packets are rather on the 20 ms and 30 ms lines. This either means that the Node-B has sent the packets with a more robust coding scheme or that most packets were retransmitted at least once. No exact telling without a L1 tracer but I guess it’s a more robust coding scheme.

By changing the antenna position the data rate suddenly increases to over 1.500 kbit/s. In the packet inter-spacing graph this is reflected by most packets being transmitted with the least robust coding scheme on the 10 ms. A certain percentage of the packets are retransmitted and show up on the 20 ms line but they are not many, around 20% I would say.

This interval with good signal conditions and the resulting good transmission speed is then followed by vary bad signal conditions. Here, the data rate drops to around 350 kbit/s. In the packet inter-space graph there are almost no frames transmitted on the 10 ms and 20 ms line. The first major line is at 30 ms. Surprisingly there is not only major additional line at 40 ms but also at 50 ms. Some packets even have an inter-space time of 70 ms. I was quite surprised by this at first. I did some reading in the meantime, however, and saw that Harri Homa and Antti Toskala in their book "HSDPA/HSUPA for UMTS" describe in figure 7.32 that during bad signal conditions their test system did not select only a single but more robust coding like in good signal conditions but diverged between 700 and 1700 bits of user data per 2 ms frame.

There remain those packets during good signal conditions to be explained which are between 2 ms and 10 ms. An interesting point here is that there is not a single IP packet between 0 and 2 ms. A clear indication of the 2 ms MAC layer frame duration. My best guess concerning these packet inter-space times is that they follow a packet which had a transmission error and were transmitted before the faulty MAC layer frame could be retransmitted. This is one of the strengths of the HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Retransmission Requests) used by HSDPA on the MAC layer which continues sending higher layer packets even if a previous one has not yet been transmitted successfully.

And this thought concludes today’s HSDPA entry. Should my German Vodafone prepaid SIM for data roaming have arrived when I come back home more entries will follow soon on HSDPA performance in other countries. So stay tuned…

HSDPA Antenna Fine Tuning

In previous blog entries on HSDPA (for links see below), I’ve been looking at HSDPA performance in operational networks from several different angles. Todays entry focuses on how sensitive an HSDPA card reacts to changes in antenna orientation.

For my tests, I’ve been using a Sierra Wireless 850 PCMCIA notebook HSDPA adapter. The card has a maximum throughput of 1.8 MBit/s and has an external antenna which can be swiveled back and forth at the side of the notebook and also tilted 180 degrees to and from the notebook. This design is not new and all Sierra Wireless cards I’ve seen so far use this kind of antenna.

While antenna adjustments seem to have no big impact on GPRS performance, a huge difference can be observed with HSDPA during medium reception conditions (3 out of 5 bars on the RX meter). As shown in the graph produced with Wireshark on the left, throughput during a file download varied dramatically between 50 kbyte/s and 150 kbyte/s depending just on the antenna position and orientation. I have to admit that I was quite surprised by this result. I tried again a couple of days later just to ensure that this was not a freak occurrence but I could easily reproduce the behavior again.

Users will probably not spend a lot of time experimenting with antenna position and orientation whenever they log on to the Internet. Thus, I think HSDPA card manufacturers have to work hard on antenna and receiver design in order to reduce such effects in the future. 3GPP standards already give some guidance for the work ahead as the standard describes optional HSDPA terminal features such as multiple antenna designs and advanced receiver algorithms for more throughput and to counter these effects. For people using the HSDPA network in a stationary or semi-stationary setup, for example with a 3.5G to Wifi bridge, I highly recommend using an external antenna or at least to place the bridge close to a window.

Designing notebooks with built in HSDPA chips might also help to reduce this effect. In such a setup the antenna can use space inside the notebook which means antennas can be bigger and thus more sensitive and less susceptible to radio interference effects.

In the next part of this article series on HSDPA, I will discuss the packet inter-spacing graph for the scenario presented here and what can be deducted from it about layer 1 air interface MAC behavior and performance.