EVALUATION OF VOICE TRANSMISSION QUALITY IN THE LTE NETWORKS

Abstract

Background. LTE mobile networks combine packet network technology and radio technology. Parameters of packet and radio subsystems significantly affects the quality of all traffic types transmission, especially telephone traffic, as the most demanding to such parameters of network transmission as delay, jitter and packet loss rate. The recommendations of the International Telecommunication Union and the documents of the partner organization of telecommunications operators (3GPP) contain hypothetical reference models, targets for end-to-end connection quality, and lists the factors that affect the quality (QoS) of VoLTE services. In addition, the network points are shown where you need to measure the quality of telephone traffic and tools for quality assessment. The quality of telephony services is assessed according to the E-model using the method of determining the mean opinion score (MOS). However, this technique is intended primarily to determine the MOS during the network planning. To calculate the MOS in a working network, you have to measure such network performance first such as voice delay and packet loss rate. This article presents the method of calculating MOS in the LTE network based on the E-model and presents the results of practical quality studies.
 Objective. The purpose of this article is research the impact of delay and packet loss ratio and voice codec characteristics in the real LTE network on quality of telephone services.
 Methods. Analysis of factors affecting on telephone services quality and analysis MOS assessment methods. Practical studies of the delay and packet loss ratio affect the MOS level in various conditions of radio coverage and network load.
 Results. Practical results of delay and packet loss ratio influence on the telephone services quality in the LTE network. Calculated MOS based on the practically measured delay and packet loss ratio.
 Conclusions. The combination of packet technologies, modern AMR-WB codecs and QoS support mechanisms in the LTE networks provides high quality perception of voice messages at the level of not less than 4 on the MOS scale. With a delay not exceeding 180 ms, a sufficiently high quality of voice transmission is ensured (MOS ≈ 4). VoLTE technology using the AMR-WB codec is quite resistant to packet loss and provides high quality perception of voice messages at a packet loss ratio of up to 1%.