An End-to-End QoS Performance Evaluation of VoLTE in 4G E-UTRAN-based Wireless Networks

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the Fourth- Generation (4G) mobile broadband technology. Its standardization has been finalized by Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) in Release 8 technical specifications (R8). As users' demand for higher data rate continues to rise, LTE and its ability to cost effectively provide fast, highly responsive mobile data services, a scalable bandwidth and a reduced latency will become ever more important. However, the Evolved Packet Core (EPC) of the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E- UTRAN) based wireless networks (LTE and LTE-Advanced) is all-IP Packet-Switched (PS) core network and lacks native support for Circuit-Switched (CS) services. This introduces the problem of how to provide voice services in these networks. The controversy around many of the proposed solutions to provide a PS voice and the effects of this step on the deployment of LTE networks is presented. This paper also deals with the Quality of Service (QoS) in a Voice over LTE (VoLTE) service. It provides a comprehensive evaluation and validation of VoLTE QoS based on the International Telecommunication Union standard Recommendations (ITU- R) and 3GPP standard technical specifications. The initial results obtained give clear evidence that the VoLTE service fulfills the ITU-R and 3GPP standard requirements in terms of end-to-end delay, jitter and packet loss rate. Furthermore, the results related to implementing different LTE bandwidths clearly reflect how these bandwidths affect the overall network performance and end-user experience.