ECE164P

COMMUNICATIONS ELECTIVE 4
QOS in LTE
Nico Deffrey S. dela Pena
HOMEWORK #2

1. Research about QCI priority and applications

2. Give 5 sample applications (with icons/logos) for each QCI.
Applications can be either smartphone or computer applications.
GAME #3 QOS LOGO QUIZ

▪ Divide yourselves into 4 groups.

▪ The instructor will give you sections of logo/icon of sample
applications for QCI
▪ You will given 45 minutes to determine the applications. Each correct
application corresponds to +0.5 additional points in the next quiz.
▪ The group who can arrange the sample applications according to
their priorities (from highest to lowest) will be given +5 additional
points. Assume that for the resource type of QCI sample applications
that can be either GBR or non-GBR that the resource type is always
non-GBR.
GOODLUCK!!!
WHAT IS QOS?

▪  Management of the data traffic in a network

▪ Refers to a network’s ability to achieve maximum bandwidth and
deal with other network performance elements like latency, jitter,
error rate and uptime
▪ Involves controlling and managing network resources by setting
priorities for specific types of data (video, audio, files) on the
network
▪ Exclusively applied to network traffic generated for video on
demand, IPTV, VoIP, streaming media, videoconferencing and online
gaming.
WHY DO WE NEED QOS IN LTE?

▪ Priority for premium subscriber who are willing to pay more high
bandwidth and better network access
▪ Some services require better priority handling in the network (e.g.
VoIP call)
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS
▪ Application and Services
▪ Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) over mobile
▪ Technology for supporting voice communications over packet networks,
such as the Internet.
▪ Voice traffic requires relatively low bandwidth, but to deliver acceptable
quality, the packets must be transmitted with minimum latency and
jitter, or variation in latency.
▪ High-priority service might also be provided for important calls, such as
emergency “911” calls and critical communication among emergency
service personnel (based on user ID, or source and/or destination).
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS
▪ Application and Services
▪ Video Streaming
▪ For quality video/audio streaming, the network must deliver high
bandwidth, but with less stringent latency and jitter
requirements than VoIP
▪ Streaming can be either person-to-person or content-to-person,
and can be either real-time or recorded
▪ Person-to-person video streaming requires high bandwidth on
both the uplink and downlink. So to support applications like Skype
(which also uses VoIP), the network will need to provide such bi-
directional QoS.
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS
▪ Application and Services
▪ Content Download
▪ A significant amount of mobile bandwidth is consumed by users
downloading and uploading movies, pictures, music, documents, etc.
Unlike with real-time video, however, these transfers are buffered and
can, therefore, be handled at a more “leisurely” pace.
▪  Unlike with real-time traffic, which uses the User Datagram Protocol
(UDP), however, batch transfers use the Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) to retransmit any and all dropped packets.
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS

▪ Mobile Traffic Surges

▪ QoS is critical to effectively managing peak-demand scenarios
when a large number of users access the same application or
service.
▪ Examples of these high-traffic scenarios include prescheduled
events, such as a game or major speech, or breaking news
somewhere around the globe.
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS

▪ Monetizing Mobile Networks

▪ QoS service differentiation provides the ability both to increase
ARPU and to utilize available bandwidth more efficiently for the
mobile operators.
▪ Requires that the network operator be able differentiate among
subscribers based on their particular needs, and to offer
differentiated or even user-customizable service packages with
specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
FACTORS DRIVING THE NEED FOR QOS
WHAT IS AN EPS BEARER?
▪ Bearer in the dictionary means "Carrier" or "Porter" which carries
something from a point to another point
▪ Under the context of communication technology, a bearer is like a
pipe line connecting two or more points in the communication
system in which data traffic follow through.
▪ Bearers pre-determine how the user end data is treated when it
travels across the LTE network.
▪ Bearers are set of network parameters that defines data specific
treatment. Some flow of data type might be provided guaranteed bit
rate while other may assign lower transfer rate.
WHAT IS AN EPS BEARER?
▪ One example of using bearers to provide tiered service packages – A
premium subscriber will always get at least 5Mbps download speed on his
LTE broadband service while for a basic package subscriber there is no
guaranteed bit rate and his speed may be subject to network traffic
conditions
▪ Through the EPS bearer, various types of traffic classified by 5-tuple are
delivered. These types of traffic are called IP flows, and each IP flow is
classified by the 5-tuple (Source IP, Destination IP, Protocol ID, Source Port,
and Destination Port). For example, when a UE connects to Google, it
would have a 5-tuple, which would be defined as IP flow, as follows:
▪ Source IP = UE IP address
▪ Destination IP = Google server IP address
▪ Protocol ID = 6 (refers to TCP)
▪ Source Port = Random number (Ephemeral port number)
▪ Destination Port = 80 (refers to WWW)
LTE QOS CONCEPT – EPS BEARER MODEL
LTE QOS CONCEPT – EPS BEARER MODEL
DEFAULT AND DEDICATED BEARER
▪ A bearer can be classified based on its QoS requirements as either
▪ Default Bearer
▪ Assigned when a mobile device first attaches to an LTE network
▪ Allocates IP address to UE
▪ Does not have specific QOS
▪ Does not have a bit rate guarantee and offers only best-effort
service.
▪ Dedicated bearer
▪ Acts as another bearer on top of the default bearer
▪ Does not allocate any additional IP address to UE
▪ Mostly used as GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) services although it can
also can be a non-GBR service.
▪ Provides a dedicated tunnel to give appropriate treatment to
specific services.
DEFAULT AND DEDICATED BEARER
DEFAULT AND DEDICATED BEARER
DEFAULT AND DEDICATED BEARER
DEDICATED BEARER

▪ A dedicated bearer is further classified as

▪ GBR
▪ Minimum guaranteed bit rate per EPS bearer.
▪ Has dedicated network resources
▪ Needed for real-time voice and video applications
▪ May be used to implement “service blocking”
▪ Non-GBR bearer
▪ Does not have dedicated resources
▪ Prone to congestion related packet losses.
▪ Does not block any network specific track or transmission
resources.
▪ Used for best-effort traffic, such as file downloads.
QOS FUNCTIONS

▪ Control Plane
▪ Admission control maintains information about all available resources
of a network entity and takes decision to allow a new session or not
based on the current resource usage.
▪ Subscription Control checks whether or not a user is entitled to use the
requested service with the specified QoS attributes
▪ Service Management coordinates the functions of the control plane
entities during setup, modification and deletion of the EPS bearers
▪ Translation function converts between the EPC QoS parameters the
various protocols for service control of interfacing external networks
e.g., UMTS to IP QoS parameters mapping
QOS FUNCTIONS

▪ User Plane
▪ Mapping function provides each data unit with the specific marking
required to receive the intended QoS at the transfer by a bearer service,
e.g., DSCP marking at the PDN-GW
▪ Classification function assigns data units to the established services of a
user according to the related QoS attributes if the user has multiple
bearer services established
▪ Resource Manager distributes the available resources between all
services sharing the same resource based on the QoS, e.g., scheduling,
bandwidth management, and power control for the radio bearers
▪ Traffic Shaping provides conformance between the negotiated QoS for
a service and the arriving data traffic
LTE QOS PARAMETERS
▪ QoS class indicator (QCI)
▪ QCI specifies the forwarding treatment (e.g. scheduling weights,
admission thresholds, queue management thresholds, link-layer
protocol configuration, etc.) that the user-plane traffic receives
between the UE and the gateway.
LTE QOS PARAMETERS

▪ Allocation and retention priority (ARP)

▪ ARP specifies the forwarding treatment for the control-plane
traffic that the bearers receive.
▪ ARP enables bearer establishment and modification, as well as
connection setup and release

▪ Maximum bit rate (MBR)

▪ MBR is applicable only for real-time services and is defined for
GBR bearers. MBR is the bit rate that the traffic on the bearer
may not exceed.
LTE QOS PARAMETERS

▪ Guaranteed bit rate (GBR)

▪ GBR specifies the bit rate that the network guarantees (e.g.
through the use of an admission control function) for that bearer.
In 3GPP Release 8 and beyond, the MBR must be set equal to the
GBR; that is, the guaranteed rate is also the maximum rate that is
allowed by the system.
POLICY CONTROL AND ASSIGNMENT

▪ Controls the mapping of packet flows onto a dedicated bearer and

determines the QoS level of the dedicated bearer through policies.
▪ Filters packet flows using five parameters, referred to as IP five-tuple:
source IP address; destination IP address; source port number;
destination port number; and protocol identification (TCP or UDP)
▪ Determines the QoS requirements based on three criteria:
application requirement; subscription information; and policy of the
operator
POLICY CONTROL AND ASSIGNMENT