Extension of a 5G Ran Simulator by Modeling User Equipment

With the upcoming release of the fifth generation of cellular networks, 5G, it is expected to be a lot more connected devices. As a consequence, the importance of the capacity of the networks is increased, especially the radio access network (RAN), which will be changed a lot from previous generations. The best method to ensure a RAN has enough capacity for its targeted area is a simulation, and therefore, there is a demand for such a simulator. The development of a simulator for RAN started last year in another thesis with the possibility to model nodes, links, and set loads. In this thesis, the functionality is extended with the addition of mobility and user equipment (UE) to create load to more accurately simulate the network traffic. Roads are added as an entity to allow mobility, and cells are modeled to determine coverage. Most requested functionality was implemented, with the main difficulties being integrating the new code into the existing code base. The simulator was then evaluated, both the validity of the model and the performance. To improve the simulator for its purpose, even more, functionalities such as geography elements like buildings or mountains blocking the signal should be considered. Another improvement would be to make links and cells less reliable. The simulator is modeling the perfect day scenario at the moment which does not always reflect upon reality