Documenti di Didattica
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Written by:
Raya Idrissa Ahmada, s140720
Submission Date: 5th December, 2015
ACRONYMS
AS Application Server
BGFC Breakout Gateway Control Function
CS Circuit Switch
CSFB Circuit Switched Fallback
EDGE Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution
GGSN Gateway GPRS Support Node
GMSC Gateway Mobile Switching Center
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GSM Global System for mobile Communication
GSMA - Global System for mobile Communication Association
HSS Home Subscriber Server
ICSCF- Interrogating Call Session Control Function
IMS Internet Protocol Multimedia System
IMS-AGW IMS Access Gateway
LTE Long Term Evolution
MGCF Media Gateway Control Function
MGW Mobile GateWay
MME Mobility Management Entity
MO mobile Originating
MRFC Multimedia Resource Function Controller
MRFP Multimedia Resource Function Processor
MSC Mobile switching Center
MT Mobile Terminating
OTT Over the Top
P-CSCF Proxy Call Session Control Function
PS Packet Switch
QoS Quality of Service
S-CSCF Serving-Call Session Control Function
SGSN Serving GPRS Support Node
SLF Server locator Function
UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunication System
UTRAN UMTS Terrestrial Access Network
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol
VoLGA Voice over LTE via Generic Access
VoLTE Voice over Long Term Evolution
ABSTRACT
There has been considerable evolution from GSM to different technologies which fulfil the
current growing demands of the users due to different new killer applications and the usage
of very smart devices like smartphones. The technology trends can be seen from extending
the GSM network to GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, LTE, LTE-Advanced as well the 5G network
which is still in deployment phase.
3GPP Release 8 introduces major advances in mobile networks for both subscribers as well
as mobile providers. The demand of higher data rates and low latency on the connection for
the users is fulfilled with LTE. On the other hand, mobile providers are able to incur less cost
due to the lower cost per transmitted bit as a result of efficient use of radio network resources.
Though there has been a lot of advancement in technologies, voice service continues to be the
main revenue generator for different mobile operators.
While other 3GPP releases are the enhancements of the already available GSM infrastructure,
LTE technology is an all-internet protocol technology meaning that the implementation of the
circuit-switched phone calls is not possible due to the packet-switched nature of LTE and
thus voice calls should be implemented differently over the LTE.
The important thing is not only to ensure that voice calls can be made in the LTE, but also to
ensure voice call continuity when a user moves out of the LTE coverage. Hence the solution
needs to provide means of backward compatibility with the previous available radio access
technologies, such as GSM/GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and others, so that an on-going call could
be handled to a legacy circuit-switched connection network.
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TABLE OF FIGURES
Figure 1: CSFB Network Architecture ...................................................................................... 3
Figure 2: MO in CSFB mode ..................................................................................................... 4
Figure 3: MT voice calls in CSFB mode ................................................................................... 5
Figure 4: VoLTE Deployment 2014 .......................................................................................... 8
Figure 5: NTT DOCOMO VoLTE Architecture and standard VoLTE Architecture ................ 9
Figure 6: LTE/EPS Bearer Service Architecture ..................................................................... 10
Figure 7: Bearer types .............................................................................................................. 11
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CONTENTS
Acronyms ................................................................................................................................................. i
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................................ ii
Table of Figures ...................................................................................................................................... iii
1
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
Advantages of CSFB............................................................................................................... 5
2.6
2.7
VoLTE ............................................................................................................................................ 8
4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5
4.6
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 12
References ..................................................................................................................................... 13
INTRODUCTION
Though there has been tremendous growth in the new applications like social networks, and
others, which require much higher capacity, voice still continues to be the most important
service and its demand is still high to the end users [1]. In the early stage of Long Term
Evolution (LTE) development, it was decided that the circuit switched technology would not
be used at all with the LTE architecture. This was a challenge to the mobile service providers
as the need to provide voice services together with SMS services which is a yet another
important service was still there [1] [2] . LTE technology supports higher data rates for the
emerging broadband technologies, but the fact that it is a packet-switched technology poses
some problems with the voice service which is a typical circuit- switched service.
With circuit switched technology, there is a connection establishment phase and once the
connection is established, the network resources are reserved for the duration of the voice
call. With this resource reservation, there is a quality of service guarantee and low latency as
there is no additional overhead apart from the connection establishment phase. The drawback
of circuit-switched technology on the other hand is the wasting of reserved resources for the
whole duration of the call.
In packet-switched technology, there is no reservation of resources, and thus they can
efficiently be shared amongst several users. But with voice service, this is not reliable, as
there is no any guarantee that the packets will arrive to the intended destination, and packet
may be lost in case there is congestion in the network. The packet-switched technologies are
favourable solution to bursty communications and are very popular for carrying data traffic.
LTE being a pure packet-switched network, it requires the Internet Protocol Multimedia
Subsystem (IMS) to ensure QoS for various multimedia services including voice. However,
most of the commercial network providers do not have IMS integrated in their core networks
[3] as it requires huge investment.
To provide voice services in LTE networks, there are some alternatives that have been
proposed from the use of CS network to the more complex alternatives which involve the use
of the already available over the top technologies like VoIP. Some of the proposed solutions
are as follows: Simultaneous Voice and LTE (SV-LTE), Over the top (OTT), Voice over
LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA), Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) and Voice over LTE
(Volte) [5].
In this report the CSFB and Volte solutions are briefly explained and compared both in terms
of how they work as well as offered performance to the user
CS fall-back solution involves the use of legacy circuit-switched technology [3]. Whenever
the UE in LTE makes or receives a call, the call is handed to the existing 2.5G (GSM EDGE
Radio Access Network - GERAN) or 3G (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access Network UTRAN) infrastructure. This requires that the LTE coverage is always within the 2.5G/3G.
In this report, the UTRAN is going to be considered as the legacy network, and thus CSFB
implies the use of the 3G UTRAN.
With this implementation, some additional modification is expected to make sure this
handover takes place both from LTE to the legacy circuit switched technologies as well as
from the legacy CS technology back to LTE after the call.
The idea here is to understand how LTE and UMTS networks are working together to
provide the CSFB services.
Before explaining how these two technologies are proposed to interwork together to allow for
CSFB services, it is very important to understand some processes needed before a UE can
make or receive a call regardless of which technology is used.
Registration: It is needed in order to inform the networks which device a user currently uses
and that it is ready to receive requests.
Paging: It is usually needed to find the current cell where the device is located as the cellular
networks only know an area where the UE is located in the power saving mode.
Handover: It is needed to keep the link while moving from one access point to another; this
ensures UE mobility while connections are active.
2.1 MOBILITY IN UMTS AND LTE TECHNOLOGIES
The UMTS part of the network is divided into two different domains; the CS domain in
which the MSC is responsible for switching the CS-data within and out of the own network
via the Gateway Mobile Switching Center (GMSC) and the PS domain in which the Serving
GPRS Support Node (SGSN) routes the PS-data within the UMTS network and outside via
the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN). Both the MSC and SGSN are responsible for
authentication and mobility management. AVLR is responsible for the mobility activities of
the MSC whereas the home subscriber server (HSS) is the master database containing all
user-related subscription information, which supports mobility management of mobile users.
With LTE, the control plane and data plane has been separated and the Mobility Management
Entity (MME) is the one responsible for the mobility management function while the Serving
Gateway (SGW) handles all user plane switching and data forwarding within the network and
access to external networks is provided via the Packet data network Gateway (P-GW).
UE
LTE coverage
eNodeB
UMTS coverage
NodeB
Iu-b
UMTS (3G)
LTE Core
S-GW
S11
MME
SGs
MSC/VLR
RNC
Gn
GGSN
Gs
Iu-CS
S3
P-GW
SGSN
SGi
Gi
IP
RRC CONNECTED state, CSFB is required to transfer the PS data context form LTE to the
3G network together in addition to the setting up of the call [4].
UE/MS
eNodeB
BSC/RNC
MSC/MSC
Center
MME
SGSN
Serving
Gateway
S1-AP Response
Either Packet Switched Handover or RRC redirect procedure (In case active data
EPS bearer)
CM Service Request (CS Call)
CM Service Reject
CM Service Reject
UE/MS
eNodeB
BSC/RNC
MME
MSC
SGSN
Serving GW
CS Paging
CS Paging
Service Request
S1-AP Request with CSFB indicator
S1-AP Response
Either Packet Switched Handover or RRC redirect procedure (In case active data
EPS bearer)
CM Service Request (CS Call)/ Paging response
RRC/RR Release
Connection Reject
Another important thing to look at is the handover from LTE to UMTS and back again. The
important question to ask is how long it takes for the handover process as well as what
happens while the UE is in the process of being directed back to LTE, and then another call is
to be received by it. Considering this and other related issues, it can be seen that the interRAT handover in CSFB might bring about problems when some situations are encountered
such as delay brought about the inter-RAT handovers especially when there is data
connection going on.
Since the CSFB requires the overlapping of the LTE with the legacy networks (UMTS in this
discussion), then it is limited to this condition, if not satisfied then it cannot be used.
As mentioned before, there are other alternatives to perform voice calls over the LTE apart
from CSFB. The SRVCC is an IMS-based solution which also requires the use of legacy
networks as the CSFB. The main advantage of SRVCC compared to CS Fallback is that the
QoS for other data connections can be maintained as it is triggered only when the UE is
losing the LTE coverage. But since it is based on IMS, it involves high cost and IMS is a very
complex solution [1].
VoLGA is yet another proposed solution for voice and other circuit switched services over
LTE with good quality of service and low call setup times. However, it has not been accepted
by the 3GPP standardization body. The biggest advantage of VoLGA is that UE can access
both voice using CS domain and data service using LTE simultaneously unlike CS Fallback
which requires a handover to the target 2/3G every time a call is made/received [1][6] [7].
OTT is a very simple solution which involves the use of third party VoIP services like Skype
to provide voice services over LTE. No changes are expected to both the network and the UE.
The user only needs to download the VoIP application and use it over LTE. It is very cheap
as it requires neither legacy network for CS Fallback or IMS for VoLGA like solutions. But
the main drawback of this approach is that there is no guarantee on the QoS and voice call
continuity cannot be ensured when the UE moves out of LTE coverage, hence it is limited to
this condition.
Due to this reason, yet another solution is needed which ensures QoS operating at moderately
low
cost.
VOLTE
Voice over LTE is a technology to provide voice services over LTE prescribed at the GSM
Association (GSMA) using IMS. The main advantages of using this approach are the
improving quality of service and unified standard solution.
MGN/MRN
VGN
IPNW
SIN
CSN/ASN
Voic
e
Voic
e
Pack
et
IPNW
IP-RNC
BTS
eNodeB
LTE Capable
Terminal
3G
LTE
HSS
SLF
Core Network (IMS)
ASN
CSN
MRN
AS
MGN
I-CSCF
MRFC
C-CSCF
MRFP
BGCF
MGCF
Other Networks
Other Networks
VGN
PCRF
PGW
MME
SGW
LTE Network
P-CSCF
IMS-AGW
PCRF
PGW
MME
SGW
eNodeB
eNodeB
MGW
LTE Network
C-Plane
U-Plane
Terminal
A)
Terminal
B) Standard VoLTE Architecture
The IMS calls for VoLTE are processed by the subscriber's S-CSCF in the home network.
The connection to the S-CSCF is via the P-CSCF. The ability of making a voice depends so
much on the discovery of the P-CSCF which varies with network used and the location
within the network.
4.4 QOS IN VOLTE
Quality of Service (QoS) is a concept of providing a particular quality for a specific type of
service. QoS is one of the main challenges for the IP-based services that lack of a dedicated
connection channel unlike for its counterpart CS. Since LTE operates over IP-based
networks, it should provide a means of improving QoS.
In VoLTE, the bit rate is controlled so as to ensure the voice service is offered with the
desired good quality of service [7]. There also has to be mechanisms required to change
priority depending on the type of signal, type of service as well as type of call, for example
emergency calls needs to be given higher priority. For this reason, the IMS needs to
coordinate with the EPC [8].
An end-to-end class-based QoS architecture has been introduced in LTE to support for both
real time and non-real time services [9]. The QoS depends on data flow and bearers. 'Bearer'
is basically a virtual concept and is a set of network configuration to provide special
treatment to set of traffic e.g. VoIP packets are prioritized by network compared to web
browser traffic. As can be seen from Figure 6, the flows are established between the UE and
the Packet Data Network Gateway (PDN-GW) and mapped to three different bearers (Radio,
S1 and S5/S8).
E-UTRAN
UE
EPC
eNB
S-GW
Internet
P-GW
Peer
Entity
End-to-end Service
External Bearer
EPS Bearer
Radio Bearer
Radio
S1 Bearer
S5/S8 Bearer
S1
S5/S8
Gi
Using this bearers and for each QoS Class Identifier (QCI), it is possible to find the class for
which the bearer belongs to [8][9].
In order to be able to operate VoLTE services over LTE, different bearers are used, for
signalling and others for other services offered. The most important ones are the default
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bearer used for signalling messages which has the highest priority amongst all the other
classes. The other bearer is for TCP-based traffic which as expected has the lowest priority
among all other classes. And the last bearer is the dedicated bearer needed for voice calls.
The standardized QoS classes are illustrated in Table 1.
Dedicated
Bearer
GBR
QCI 1-4
Default
Bearer
Non-GBR
QCI 5-9
Non-GBR
QCI 5-9
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- GBR: The minimum guaranteed bit rate per EPS bearer. Specified independently for uplink
and downlink
- MBR: The maximum guaranteed bit rate per EPS bearer. Specified independently for
uplink and downlink
CONCLUSION
The first important thing to be taken into account is that the solution needed to provide voice
services over LTE also needed to provide a unified format of voice traffic on LTE as well as
other systems. This means a standardised solution which allows for interconnectivity as well
as international roaming with better QoS to the end users and less cost in implementation. In
addition to this, while providing the solution to the voice service in LTE, the performance
should not be degraded in the other on-going PS connections services.
Solutions which depend on the legacy networks such as CSFB are reliable in terms of using
the already huge invested technology. In addition, the OTT solutions such as VoIP require
very little cost. However, both of these solutions do not provide QoS guarantee to either the
users or to specific applications.
With broadband applications, different applications have different requirements to operate as
efficiently as possible. A simple example is that of voice call and web surfing, for the quality
of the call to be high, the voice call requires dedicated resources, i.e., bandwidth allocated to
it for the duration of the call, otherwise the voice quality will be degraded. For the case of
web surfing on the other hand, no dedication of resources is necessary. This means that for
different services, the network has to provide different categories of quality of services
depending on the type of service. Another consideration is that of different users with
different requirements, some subscribers are willing to pay more for very high quality
services.
With this, it can be seen how the VoLTE solution is better as compared to the other
alternatives mentioned in different literatures.
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REFERENCES
[1]. V. Paisal, Seamless voice over LTE, 2010 IEEE 4th Int. Conf. Internet Multimed.
Serv. Archit. Appl. IMSAA 2010, 2010
[2]. M. Poikselk, H. Holma, J. Hongisto, J. Kallio, and A. Toskala, Voice Over LTE:
VoLTE, Voice Over LTE VoLTE, 2012.
[3]. J. E. V. Bautista, S. Sawhney, M. Shukair, I. Singh, and V. K. Govindaraju,
Performance of CS Fallback from LTE to UMTS, IEEE Commun. Mag., no.
September, pp. 136143, 2013.
[4]. 3GPP 23.272 Circuit Switched (CS) Fallback in Evolved Packet System (EPS); Stage
2.
[5]. A. Tekovi, I. Peut, and Z. Mori, Voice Service in an LTE Network- CSFB, no.
September 2013, pp. 2527, 2014.
[6]. M. Sauter, E. Summary, V. Overview, I. Roaming, E. Calls, and F. Alternatives,
Voice over LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA) A Whitepaper - August 2009, no.
August, pp. 116, 2009.
[7]. S. Gavrilovi, Standard based solutions for voice and SMS services over LTE,
Mipro 2010 - 33rd Int. Conv. Inf. Commun. Technol. Electron. Microelectron. Proc.,
2010.
[8]. K. Tokunaga, S. Minamimoto, M. Kaneko, Y. Kamiya, R. Kito, H. Sakuramoto, and I. Imamura,
1. VOLTE for Enhancing Voice Services, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 422, 2010.
[9]. M. R. Tabany and C. G. Guy, An End-to-End QoS Performance Evaluation of VoLTE in 4G EUTRAN-based Wireless Networks, ICWMC 2014 Tenth Int. Conf. Wirel. Mob. Commun., no.
DL, pp. 9097, 2014.
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