This paper describes an educational simulation tool, GSMSIM, which has been developed to teach GSM mobile communications in laboratory lectures. The tool has been programmed in OMNET++, a flexible environment which allows its extension to different aspects of GSM technology, such as the simulation of calls, traffic, handoffs, etc. This tool has been used in the courses ‘Communication Systems’ and ‘Telecommunication Networks I’, at the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain. We report some of the results obtained in three different scenarios simulating a small, medium and large city, with different characteristics of network coverage.
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