Analysis of VoIP Traffic over LTE for different Codecs

Abstract

LTE (Long Term Evolution), a 4G mobile communication standard has a support for higher data rates and lower latency. Since LTE is completely an Internet Protocol (IP) based technology, Network operators of LTE can handle voice via a “fall-back” technique by using previously existed circuit switched networks. To avoid this, Voice over IP (VoIP) services need to be used to deliver the voice over IP networks, such as Internet. Voice Codec is one of the critical components in VoIP used to convert analog signals to compressed digital packets and vice-versa that can be sent over the internet. But there are different kinds of codecs exist that optimize the voice stream based on bandwidth and application requirement. Unfortunately, there is no standard codec that is acceptable for all circumstances, some codecs provides better quality, some other uses lesser bandwidth. All these features will effect on the ultimate selection of codec by an organization. This paper focuses on the quality of service (QOS) analysis of VoIP traffic over LTE by configuring different voice codecs such as G.711, G.722.2, G.723.1 and G.729. To analyze the performance of these codecs ns-3 simulator is being used since its core has a support for LTE models. The comparative study of above selected VoIP codecs over LTE network in terms of Packet Loss, End to End delay, Jitter, and Throughput in normal and error prone scenarios has been done. From the analyzed results and the performance evaluated, the selection of codec will become easy to provide better VoIP services for customer satisfaction.