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AbstractLong Term Evolution (LTE) is an All-IP based the voice calls should be routed through the packet switched
mobile network, which does not support circuit switching (CS) networks, the Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) is considered as he
feature, previous cellular networks, such as 2G and 3G, were long-term goal for the delivery of voice services on LTE
designed mainly to carry voice calls, later services added cellular networks which is a specific type of VoIP designed into the
data support, through methods that basically tunneled data LTE standard and based on the IP Multimedia Subsystem
inside of voice-call connections. In LTE there are many network (IMS) infrastructure, which explains why sometimes
approaches for supporting voice services over LTE to serve
VoLTE is called Voice over IMS where the voice packets
customers, these approaches include Voice over LTE (VoLTE)
are treated as Very Important Packets by the whole LTE
[with Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC) till full LTE
network deployment], also include Over The Top Voice over IP
network. But on the other hand, IMS is complex, costly and
(OTT VOIP). The main objective in this paper is to clarify the will take long time for deployment from some network
technical structure of VoLTE compared to OTT VOIP over LTE, operators point of view.
to eliminate the confusion away of them since both of them are There is also Over the Top VOIP (OTT VOIP) like
VOIP dependent technologies, and to evaluate the performance Skype and Google Talk etc. Which sometimes called
of both VoLTE and OTT VOIP from the most important QoS
Third party VOIP as one of the suggested intermediate
parameters point of view, in different scenarios with different
number of users assuming congested and non-congested network
solutions for voice service on LTE, which is a very simple
states, The analysis for all these scenarios are based on solution with very little extra cost for network operators, where
simulations using OPNET 17.5 simulation tool. the voice packets dont have any priority over any other data
packets according to the Third Generation Partnership Project
Keywords LTE; VoLTE; OTT VoIP; VoIP; QoS; OPNET (3GPP) standards provided for LTE.
Nonetheless, even in the presence of VoLTE, OTT VOIP
I. INTRODUCTION will be widely used by users as an alternative, because of the
As Internet is the main information database, cellular fact that it able them to choose their own voice service, [2] in
technology is required to merge with the core Internet addition to the flexibility of making calls to others using VOIP
structure, with all its bandwidth and fast trafficking facility in services over Internet, which cannot be accomplished by
the cheapest way possible. This has been the fundamental VoLTE.
premise behind the development of LTE; the last step towards LTE has a tailored and unique Quality of Service (QoS)
the 4th generation of cellular networks that gained widespread mechanism for end-to-end service delivering for minimum
attention due to its high data rates and improved Quality of QoS requirements assurance for its service delivered to
Service (QoS), LTE determines goals peak data rate for improve the end user perception about voice service.
Downlink (DL) 100 Mbps and Uplink (UL) data rate for
50Mbps, increased cell edge, user throughput, improved QoS in LTE, to what level does VoLTE compared with the
spectral efficiency and scalable bandwidth 1.4 MHz to 20 OTT VOIP achieve these QoS requirements and how the
MHz, the presence of such innovative features for LTE finds performance will be for different LTE network states, all will
minimum amount of requirements for voice calls that it became be investigated during this study.
difficult to be waived, these requirements like:
The rest of the paper is organized as follows, Section II
Guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) presents QoS description in LTE, section III presents the IMS
High Definition (HD) voice quality different entities and principals of VoLTE technology
Rich communication services (RCS) compared with OTT VOIP technology. Different simulation
scenarios are presented in Section IV. Results and discussion
Fast call setup time
are presented in section V, and finally a general conclusion of
this work is presented in Section VI.
LTE by design doesn't have a Circuit Switched (CS) core
for voice service, that will remain one of the most important
services delivered by cellular networks, which means that even
II. QOS MANAGEMENT IN LTE link-layer protocol configuration, etc.) that the user-plane
traffic receives between the UE and the PGW. The QCI
A. Bearers in LTE specification with corresponding parameters and common
In LTE Network QoS defines priorities for certain services applications are presented in [6] and is specified in a Traffic
during the time of high congestion in the network. In LTE, Flow Template (TFT), which is always associated with
QoS is implemented between User Equipment (UE) and Packet dedicated bearer, it defines rules so that UE and Network
Gateway (PGW) and is applied to a set of bearers. 'Bearer' is a knows which IP packet should be sent on particular dedicated
virtual concept and is a set of network configuration to provide bearer. It usually has rules on the basis of one of the following
special treatment to set of traffic. All flows mapped to a single parameters:
bearer receive the same packet-forwarding treatment (e.g. Port numbers
scheduling, queue management, rate shaping, link layer
Type of Service (ToS) / Differentiated Services Code
configuration, etc.) between the UE and the gateway.
Point (DSCP) values
In LTE, QoS is applied on Radio bearer, S1 bearer and S5 Source/Destination address
bearer, collectively called as Evolved Packet System (EPS) Protocol (TCP/UDP)
bearer as fig.1 shows.
III. VOLTE PRINCIPLES VS OTT VOIP
The IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) network is the master
controller for VoLTE calls on an LTE network, it is IMS that
recognizes the need for special network conditions required to
support voice traffic. The LTE network takes instruction from
the IMS network using the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to
establish the desired QoS environment and initiates the VoLTE
call, it also notifies LTE when the call has completed, and
directs LTE to tear down the special voice environment [3].
1) The first case (network is congested): Four different LTE Network Settings
scenarios are considered depending on the number of users as Node Attribute Value
following: scenario 1 with 5 users/cell, scenario 2 with 10 Antenna gain (dBi) -1 dBi
users/cell, scenario 3 with 15 users/cell and scenario 4 with 20 MCS Index 28
users/cell, all users in each scenario are downloading 1 Pathloss Parameters Free space
UE
Megabytes file through the FTP server, during simulation, Receiver Sensitivity -200dBm
users will start the file downloading around the 100 th second; Number of Rx Antennas 2
causing congestion to the network in each scenario, typically Number of Tx Antennas 1
at the 3rd minute (180th second) the Voice conversations will Antenna Gain (dBi) 15 dBi
start between users at cell 1 (Callers) and users at cell 2 1.4 MHZ
PHY Profile
(Callees), therefore it will be 5 users/cell in scenario 1 and FDD
Spatial
also 5 voice conversations and in scenario 2 we will have 10 Multiplexing
voice conversations ,etc. MIMO Transmission
2 Codewords
Technique
2 Layers
For all scenarios simulation period is 8 minutes. eNodeB
Number of Rx Antennas 2
In VoLTE simulation, a gold bearer is chosen, with a
Number of Tx Antennas 2
96 Kbps link bitrate in downlink and uplink.
Operating Power 20
The constructed LTE network topology and simulation Receiver Sensitivity -200dBm
scenarios are as shown in fig. 3. No Link
Scheduling Mode Adaptation
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
The collected graphs compare QoS parameters like End to
End Delay, Packet Delay Variation (PDV), Jitter and Packet
(c) (d) Loss (PL)) in addition to Mean Opinion Score (MOS) between
VoLTE and OTT VOIP for all scenarios while in each scenario
Figure 3: Simulates LTE network topology and simulation scenarios in the mean value of each QoS parameter is considered.
OPNET. (a) scenario 1, (b) scenario 2, (c) scenario 3, (d) scenario 4
A. First case results
2) The second case (network is non-congested): Where the 1) Packet End-to-End delay:
users handles only voice and there is no file downloading i.e. This parameter gives the total voice packet delay i.e. the
only voice traffic is generated in the network, the number of mouth to ear delay between the users. In all scenarios, the
voice calls in the network is periodically incremented from the aggregate mean End-to-End delay for all users in the network
3rd minute to the 10th minute and half (650 seconds) with 1 in each scenario is considered, as shown in the graph in fig. 4
the End-to-End delay for VoLTE has almost the same value for
5 Users/cell (scenario 1) where the value is [0.084 sec] and 10 node. VOIP Quality regions versus the Jitter values are given
Users/cell (scenario 2) where the value is [0.099sec] with small in Table IV below [8]. The Jitter graph is shown in fig. 6; the
increase at 15 Users/cell (scenario 3) to be [0.130 sec] which Jitter for VoLTE and OTT VOIP as well has a good results.
lies in the Good Quality VOIP region according to VOIP Which all are less than 20 msec, therefore lying in the Good
Quality classification with respect to the End-to-End Delay VOIP Quality.
values provided in [8] and summarized in Table III below, but
in scenario 4 (20 Users/cell) the value exceeds that limit to be TABLE V. QUALITY CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO JITTER VALUES
[0.232 sec] which lies in the Acceptable Quality VOIP region.
VOIP
Good Acceptable Poor
Quality
TABLE IV. VOIP QUALITY CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO THE END-TO- Jitter
0-20 20-50 >50
END DELAY VALUES (ms)
VOIP
Good Acceptable Poor
Quality
End-to-
End Delay 0-150 150-300 >300
(ms)