HSDPA delay analysis in live networks using VoIP traffic from end user perspective

Abstract

Mobile broadband and Voice over IP communication improved considerably in the last years, but both technologies have been developed independently from each other. VoIP has special Quality of Service needs, among them mostly delay, jitter and packet loss could be critical in HSDPA networks. In this survey an HSDPA delay and packet loss analysis has been executed, based on VoIP traffic, using the live networks of Hungarian providers, to find out, whether the HSDPA networks are appropriate for VoIP communication or not. After 312 calls and more than three million analysed packets we found that HSDPA networks are not capable to provide interactive VoIP calls in the necessary and expected voice quality, because of the delay increasing for a short-time in upload direction quite often. Besides the primary results, a strong connection has been detected between the frame size and the one-way delay times in the radio access network.