Resource Allocation Algorithm for VoLTE with

Semi-Persistent Scheduling
1

Xin Lv1 , Xinyu Gu1 , Xin Deng1 , Lin Zhang1 , Wenyu Li2

Key Lab of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, 100086, China
2
Beijing Key Lab of New Generation Broadband Wireless Mobile Commun. Tech.,
Standard and Verification China Academy of Telecommunication Research, Beijing, 100191, China
Email: lvxin521@126.com
AbstractNowadays, Voice of LTE (VoLTE) is used to support
voice communications in LTE network. As one of the key techniques for VoLTE, semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) is important
to improve the capacity of VoLTE users. However with SPS, the
resource and modulation and coding scheme (MCS) are usually
decided by the initial scheduling and keep unchanged during the
active state. Considering the continuously changing channel, it is
hard to ensure the performance of the voice packet. In order to
solve this problem, a resource allocation algorithm is proposed
based on the prediction of channel quality change. Furthermore,
the data rate of Adaptive multi Rate(AMR) codec is adaptively
adjusted in the resource allocation algorithm to reduce VoLTEs
impact on other data services. Simulation results prove that the
proposed algorithm can reduce the retransmission of VoLTE
users and improve the throughput performance of other traffic
businesses.
KeywordVoLTE; Resource Allocation; Semi-persistent
Scheduling;

I.

I NTRODUCTION

Although the data traffic and the data revenues are increasing, the voice service still contributes a considerable amount of
the operators revenues. It still affects a lot on peoples daily
lives. Nowadays, Voice over IP (VoIP) applications such as
Skype ,Gtalk and Asterisk have become very popular on the
Internet [1]. Since LTE system only supports packet services,
the voice service will use Voice over LTE (VoLTE) other
than Circuit Switched (CS) voice [2]. As more and more
LTE base stations are being deployed, VoLTE will replace
the CS technology and become the main method for voice
service. However, the main weakness point of VoLTE is that
the sound quality is sometimes not desirable [3]. Therefore,
some conservative schemes which allocate more resource to
VoLTE users would be used to improve the performance.
LTE is expected to support a large number of VoLTE users
while satisfying the required Quality of Service (QoS) [4].
Large number of VoLTE users consume so many resource by
conservative resource allocation schemes and the performance
of other data services will be impacted consequently. As a
result, it is important to find an effective resource allocation
algorithm to ensure not only the quality of voice service but
also the performance of other data services.
Traditional scheduling scheme for the data transmission is
dynamic scheduling. Dynamic scheduling has the advantage
of exploiting the instantaneous channel state information, but
it results in high overhead of control signaling with huge

number of VoLTE users for small packets that show up

frequently [5]. To solve this problem and support high VoLTE
capacity, semi-persistent scheduling(SPS) is proposed to signal
resource assignment for VoLTE [6]. SPS includes two main
principles: persistent scheduling for initial transmissions and
dynamic scheduling for retransmissions [7]. Through SPS, a
high VoLTE capacity with limited control signaling can be
supported [8].
In downlink SPS, the modulation and coding scheme
(MCS) for users initial transmissions is decided at the start
of VoLTE active state, based on the instantaneous Signal to
Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) reported by user. The
MCS is fixed for the following scheduling in active state
unless retransmissions happen. Although SPS can efficiently
reduce the demand of control signaling, users mobility and the
variations of channel state are ignored during the active state.
It inevitably leads to the increasing of block error ratio (BLER)
and the delay of VoLTE users. Besides, more retransmissions
can result in the increase of the resource consumption which
will further effect the performance of other services. Therefore,
it is necessary to apply a suitable initial MCS for SPS in order
to improve the performance of VoLTE users. To the best of
authors knowledge, relative research is important but scant.
In [9], the authors described and evaluated different semipersistent radio resource assignment methods to improve the
VoLTE capacity. However, it does not consider the change of
the channel state. In [8], a resource allocation method decided
by instantaneous SINR is provided and a conservative MCS
selection is proposed. In the algorithm the lowest MCS is
selected among all the MCSs with the same amount of resource
required, but the method to select the MCS ignores the change
of channel state and is a little baseless.
In this paper, a resource allocation algorithm considering
both VoLTE and other data services is proposed. In the
proposed algorithm, the initial MCS is determined according
to predicted change of the channel quality. In addition, in order
to improve the performance of other data services, the data rate
of the voice Adaptive multi Rate (AMR) codec is adaptively
adjusted.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
presents the system model and the related works. Section III
shows the proposed method to improve the performance of
both VoLTE users and other data services. Section IV provides
the simulation results and the analysis. Finally, conclusions are
presented in Section V.

978-1-4799-8088-8/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

II.

R ESOURCE ALLOCATION OF VO LTE

A. Traffic characters of VoLTE

Two states are defined for VoLTE traffic: active state and
idle state. Voice packets of VoLTE are generated at a constant
interval of 20ms during the active state while a cycle of 160ms
is defined during the idle state. Whats more, voice packets
lengths of active state are 352 bits and 224 bits when AMR
codecs with data rates 12.2kbps and 7.9kbps are used [10].
In addition, a two state Markov process defined by 3GPP is
used to model VoLTE as indicated in Fig. 1 [11]. The transfer
probabilities among the states are a and c which are both set
to 0.01. In this paper the scheduling during the idle state is
not discussed as dynamic scheduling is used.

Idle
State

Active
State

B. The number of resource allocated to VoLTE

For LTE data traffic, the basic scheduling unit is one
Physical Resource Block (PRB) pair which consists of two
slots, each slot includes 7 OFDM symbols and 12 sub-carriers.
In LTE, link adaption is used to select the most suitable
MCS according to the instantaneous channel quality which is
represented by the reported Channel Quality Indicator (CQI)
from User Equipment (UE). The relationship between CQI and
MCS is shown in table I [12] and higher CQI means higher
modulation scheme and larger coding rate.

CQI
Index
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7

M ODULATION AND CODING RATE CORRESPONDING TO

DIFFERENT CQI

modulation

coding rate
x1024
out of range
QPSK
78
QPSK
120
QPSK
193
QPSK
308
QPSK
449
QPSK
602
16QAM
378

CQI
Index
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15

modulation
16QAM
16QAM
16QAM
64QAM
64QAM
64QAM
64QAM
64QAM

coding rate
x1024
490
616
466
567
666
772
873
948

With the predefined mapping relationship between MCS

and reported CQI, we can calculate the number of PRB-pairs
needed for the voice packet of the VoLTE users.
NP RB =

1
20
13
10
2
1

2
13
9
11
1
1

3
8
6
12
1
1

4
5
4
13
1
1

5
4
3
14
1
1

6
3
2
15
1
1

7
3
2

8
2
1

9
2
1

C. VoLTE scheduling strategy

Two-state Markov chain for VoLTE state transitions

TABLE I.

PRB- PAIRS WITH DIFFERENT VO LTE

AMR RATES

THE NUMBER OF

b=1-a

a
Fig. 1.

TABLE II.

CQI index
PRB Number (AMR12.2)
PRB Number (AMR7.95)
CQI index
PRB Number (AMR12.2)
PRB Number (AMR7.95)

d=1-c

rate of AMR codecs is 7.95kbps and 12.2kbps. Nsc and l equal

to 14 and 12 represent the number of subcarriers and number
of symbols per PRB-pair respectively. Nsc l is equal to the
number of total Resource Elements (REs) in one PRB-pairs.
Nothers denotes the number of REs allocated to the control
information. CR and MS represent the coding rate and modulation scheme respectively. In this paper simulation platform
of TD-LTE is used, when uplink-downlink configuration is set
to DSUDD and Control Format Indicator (CFI) is equal to 1,
the average number of REs allocated to control information
is 50. The required PRB-pair numbers for different CQI with
different AMR codecs are shown in Table II.

L
(Nsc l Nothers ) CR M S

(1)

In the formula (1), L indicates the length of the traffic

packets which is determined by the source rate of AMR codec.
L is equal to 224 bits or 352 bits respectively when the data

In the network, usually there are both VoLTE users and

other data services users. Because VoLTE users have a critical
requirement of delay, a higher priority are given to VoLTE
users in the process of scheduling. In order to ensure the performance of VoLTE, conservative resource allocation methods
should be used. However, it will consume lots of resource when
there are lots of VoLTE users. Therefore, it is important to
figure out a new scheme to not only ensure good performance
of VoLTE users but also reduce their influences on other data
services.
III.

P ROPOSED RESOURCE ALLOCATION ALGORITHM

Large amount of resource allocated to VoLTE users can

inevitably influence the performance of other data services. As
a result, it is important to ensure not only the good performance
of VoLTE but also that of the other data services. This paper
gives a proposed algorithm to ensure the good performance
of VoLTE and other data services by predicting SINR and
adjusting the date rate of AMR codec.
A. VoLTE MCS selection based on predicted SINR
The MCS chosen by the instantaneous CQI can not be
always fitted since the channel state keeps changing. To solve
the problem, it is desirable to predict the change of the channel
quality. The future change of the quality can be predicted
according to the previous change of the channel quality. As
the indicator of channel quality, CQI is used to record the
previous channel change as shown in formula (2).
CQI = CQIt CQIprevious

(2)

In this paper, the reported CQI is recorded every 0.5s when

VoLTE user is in the idle state. CQIprevious is the last two
recorded value when the state of VoLTE user becomes active.
The future channel quality can be predicted by formula (3).
CQIselect = CQIt + CQI

(3)


However, the future channel state can be predicted to be
excessive when the channel state becomes better, the poor
channel state currently will be neglected which can cause
the increasing of BLER. In order to overcome this problem,
the future channel quality is not predicted but using the
instantaneous channel state if the channel quality becomes
better. So the reported CQI can be got by formula (4).

CQIt
if CQI 0
CQIselect =
(4)
CQIt + CQI if CQI < 0
However, the prediction of channel quality according to
formula (4) is not accurate enough and needs to be further
improved. It is found that the user position and moving
direction in a cell have important impact on the channel quality
change. Firstly, consider a usual case that the users walk along
a straight line in a cell. The change of the distance between
the users and Base Station (BS) will become larger and larger
although the users travel the same distance after they reached
the nearest distance. As shown in Fig. 3, although the mobile
user which travels the same distance z after it reached the
nearest point to BS, it is proved in the appendix that the
outcome of a b is larger than that of b c when a, b and c
denote the distance between the user and BS. This means that
the change of channel state becomes larger when the user are
leaving the cell.
Moving
direction

Base Station A

a
cb

V1
V2

if > T hres1
if < T hres1

(7)

As shown by formula (6) and (7), formula (7) means that

takes a lower value V1 when is larger than the threshold
T hres1 and a large value V2 in other cases. Larger means
that the user is leaving the serving cell and the channel quality
decreases initially and increases, so lower value V1 is used.
To avoid costing too much increase of allocated resource, a
threshold T is used to limit the predicted change. Therefore,
the proposed algorithm is

CQIt
if CQI 0
CQIselect =
CQIt + max {CQI , T } if CQI < 0
(8)
B. Adaptive AMR rate based on the number of resource
allocated to VoLTE
Large number of VoLTE users occupy huge resource, and
the required number of resource can be even more after using
the method above. In this paper, the impact of VoLTE on other
data services is analyzed when every VoLTE users is allocated
1, 2, 4 or 8 PRB-pairs to transmit the voice packet in active
state. As can be seen from Fig. 3, the impact on other data
services are huge, especially with more VoLTE users and more
resource allocated to single VoLTE users when the bandwidth
is 20MHz. The reduction can be larger than 50%. Though
VoLTE service has strict delay requirement and higher priority,
it is better to reduce its impact on other data services. To
reduce the impact on other data services, the code rate of AMR
codec is adaptively changed in this paper. A thresholdwhich
represents the proportion of the PRB-pairs that allocated to
VoLTE is set to limit the resource allocated to VoLTE.

mobile path on the

present moment

1.2

Reference
VoLTE-200UE/Sector

VoLTE-100UE/Sector
VoLTE-300UE/Sector

b
z

Fig. 2. The example moving path of one VoLTE user in the system-simulation

In addition, users will travel away from the serving cell and
handover to another which will result in the channel quality
decreases initially and increases consequently. A parameter
is used to indicate the position of the users in the serving
cell to make the prediction more correctly. can be get from
formula (5).
Tt1 THAN DOV ER
(5)
=
Tdwell
Tt1 represents the current time and THAN DOV ER means
the time that the users latest handover occurred. Tdwell means
the average cell dwell duration. As a result, expresses the
position of the user in the serving cell. When is close to
1, it means that the user is on the edge of the cell and will
handover to another cell.
To consider this trend, the predicted channel quality change
is scaled by as scalar .
CQI = CQI

(6)

User Throughput

1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1PRB

2PRB

4PRB

8PRB

Normalization of average throughput of the other data services (20MHz)

Fig. 3.

The impact of VoLTE users on the other data services

It can be seen from Fig. 4 that the required number of

PRB-pairs for VoLTE users using AMR codec with 7.9kbpsis
is obviously less than that using AMR codec with 12.2kbps,
especially in poor SINR state. In order to reduce the impact
on other data services, the AMR codec with 7.9kbps is used
when the proportion of the resource allocated to VoLTE traffic
is larger than the threshold. The higher data rate of AMR codec
means higher voice quality, so AMR codec with 12.2kbps of
data rate is used when the number of the needed PRB-pairs is
equal.

20
Using AMR12.2 for initial VoLTE users
Using AMR7.95 for extended VoLTE users

18

The number of required PRBpairs

16
14
12

B. Results of the proposed algorithm

10

The results of the performance of VoLTE users and the

other data services are presented here. The reference method
is that the MCS is decided by the instantaneous CQI and AMR
codec is 12.2kbps. The reported CQI is predicted and the AMR
rate is adaptively adjusted in the proposed algorithm.

8
6
4
2
0

The key parameters are summarized in Table III. The values

of parameters which defined in this paper are empirically
decided. Whats more, the link to system mapping is done
using Exponential Effective SINR Mapping (EESM).

8
9
CQI Index

10

11

12

13

14

15

0.95

MCS selcection based on predicted CQI

MCS secltion based on instantanous CQI

0.9

Fig. 4. The selection of AMR codec with different coding rates for initial
and restricted VoLTE users

0.85

The proposed algorithm to adjust the AMR rate is described

by Algorithm 1. The VoLTE user chooses AMR codec with
12.2kbps when the proportion of resource allocated to VoLTE
users is less than the threshold value P which is set to 0.5,
otherwise AMR codec with 7.9kbps is used.

CDF

0.8
0.75
0.7
0.65
0.6
0.55

Algorithm 1 Adaptive AMR Rate Algorithm

Definition:
Pa indicates the resource allocated to V oLT E;
P indicates the threshold;
Adaptive AMR Rate Algorithm:
if VoLTE users are scheduled then
2:
Choose M CS by the predicted CQI;
if Pa < P then
4:
Select AM R codec with 12.2kbps;
Record the resource allocated to V oLT E users Pa
6:
else
if The number of PRB-pairs is the same with different
AMR codecs then
8:
Select AM R codec with 12.2kbps;
Record the resource allocated to V oLT E users Pa
10:
else
Select AM R codec with 7.9kbps;
12:
Record the resource allocated to V oLT E users Pa
end if
14:
end if
else
16:
Allocate resource to other users;
end if
IV.

S IMULATION R ESULTS AND A NALYSIS

A. System model
In this section, the performance of PRA algorithm is evaluated in a downlink multi-cell system-level simulator which
is built according to the LTE specifications [13]. The SCM
Urban Macro (UMa) test environment is set for simulation
with VoLTE users and other data services users. Two traffic
models are used in this paper: VoLTE and full buffer. The
users are dropped uniformly in the network deployment. All
users walk a straight line with constant rate and random initial
direction.

0.5

Fig. 5.
sector)

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5
BLER

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

BLER distribution with different algorithms(200 VoLTE users per

Fig. 5 depicts the BLER distribution of VoLTE users with

the reference and proposed algorithm when the number of
VoLTE users is 200 per sector. Considering the HARQ point
to be 10% for the reference case, the BLER is more than
30% with the reference method. However, with the proposed
method, the BLER is only about 20%.
The proportion of HARQ retransmission numbers is compared between the reference method and the proposed algorithm in Table IV. It can be seen that, with the proposed algorithm,
the retransmission times reduced. For example, with 200
VoLTE users per sector, the possibility of one retransmission
number with the proposed algorithm can be about 0.1 larger
than with the reference method.
TABLE III.

S IMULATION PARAMETERS

Simulation Parameters
Traffic model
Duplex Mode
Channel Type
Number of Cells
Number of Sectors per Cell
User number per Sector
Inter-site distance(m)
User Noise Figure
MS Antenna Gain
BS Antenna Gain
BS transmit power
Thermal Noise Density
Bandwidth
Center Frequency
L2S interface
T
V1
V2
P

Value
Full Buffer
TDD
SCM
19
3
5
500
9dB
0dBi
14dBi
16dBm
-174dBm/Hz
10MHz
2GHz
EESM
-5
0.36
1.2
0.5

TABLE IV.
Number of
VoLTE users
150
150
200
200

P ROPOTION OF HARQ R ETRANSMISSION N UMBERS

Algorithm
reference
proposed
reference
proposed

HARQ Retransmission Times Proportion

0
1
2
>=3
0.7858
0.1863
0.0269
0.0010
0.8310
0.1501
0.0183
0.0006
0.7387
0.2405
0.0185
0.0023
0.8229
0.1628
0.0123
0.0020

The Average Sector Throughput(Mbps)

15

Proposed algorithm
Reference algorithm

14
13
12
11
10
9
8
100

150

200

250

300

Number of VoLTE uesrs/sector

Fig. 6. The average sector throughput with different VoLTE users per sector

Fig.6 shows that the performance of the other traditional

data services is improved obviously by using the proposed
algorithm. The improvement with the proposed algorithm can
be 30% with 300 VoLTE users and 10% with 200 VoLTE users.
The gain comes from the adaptively adjusted AMR codec,
which leaves more resource to other data services
V.

C ONCLUSION

In this paper, the performance of VoLTE and its impact on

other data services are investigated by system-level simulation.
In order to improve the performance of VoLTE, a resource
allocation algorithm is proposed based on the prediction of
channel quality change. Whats more, the rate of AMR codec
is adaptively adjusted to improve the performance of the other
data services. Simulation results confirm that the proposed
algorithm improves the performance of VoLTE and other data
services significantly.
VI.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This work was supported by the State Major Science and

Technology Special Projects (Grant no. 2013ZX03001026001) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities (Grant no. 2014RC0107).
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A PPENDIX
To prove that the the change of the distance between the
users and BS will become larger although the users travel the
same distance after they reached the nearest distance, we just
need to prove that the outcome of a b is larger than that of
b c. That is (a b) (b c) > 0.
(a b) (b c) = a + c 2b



(9)
2
2
= x2 + (y + 2z) + x2 + y 2 2 x2 + (y + z)
Here, x2 is considered to be a constant h. Because y + z
is the middle
point between y and y + 2z. If the equation of
f (x) = h + x2 is a convex function when h expresses a
constant, the formula (6) will be proved to be larger than zero.
 1

(10)
f  (x) = x h + x2 2 > 0 (if x > 0)
 1

 3

f  (x) = h + x2 2 x2 h + x2 2
h
=
>0
3
(h + x2 ) 2

(11)

The first derivative and second derivative of the f(x) are

both larger than zero when x is larger than zero, which can
prove that the equation is a convex function. As a result, the
outcome of a b is larger than that of b c.