Characterizing and Modeling Session-Level Mobile Traffic Demands from Large-Scale Measurements

We analyze 4G and 5G transport-layer sessions generated by a wide range of mobile services at over 282,000 base stations (BSs) of an operational mobile network, and carry out a statistical characterization of their demand rates, associated traffic volume and temporal duration. Based on the gained insights, we model the arrival process of sessions at heterogeneously loaded BSs, the distribution of the session-level load and its relationship with the session duration, using simple yet effective mathematical approaches. Our models are fine-tuned to a variety of services, and complement existing tools that mimic packet-level statistics or aggregated spatiotemporal traffic demands at mobile network BSs. They thus offer an original angle to mobile traffic data generation, and support a more credible performance evaluation of solutions for network planning and management. We assess the utility of the models in practical application use cases, demonstrating how they enable a more trustworthy evaluation of solutions for the orchestration of sliced and virtualized networks.