Multi-threaded Simulation of 4G Cellular Systems within the LTE-Sim Framework

Nowadays, an always increasing number of researchers and industries are putting a large effort in the design and the implementation of protocols, algorithms, and network architectures targeted at the the emerging 4G cellular technology. In this context, multi-core/multi-processor simulation tools can accelerate their activities by drastically reducing the time required to simulate complex scenarios. Unfortunately, today's available tools are mostly single-threaded and they cannot exploit the performance gain offered by parallel programming approaches. To bridge this gap, we have significantly upgraded the LTE-Simframework by implementing a concurrent scheduling algorithm, namely the Multi-Master Scheduler, aimed at efficiently handling events in a parallel manner, while guaranteeing the correct execution of the simulation itself. Experimental results will demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposal and the performance gain that can be achieved with respect to other classical event scheduling algorithms.