Performance Evaluation of Video, Voice and Web Traffic Over Heterogeneous Access Networks

Abstract

By simulation using NS-3 we evaluated the performance of voice, video and web traffic sharing a wireless access network connected to a wired core. We compared the performance in terms of end-to-end delay, end-to-end delay variation, average throughput and loss percentage. For the wireless access network, we considered cases when it consisted of a single technology type, e.g., WiFi (IEEE 802.11), WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) and LTE, and when it was heterogeneous, i.e., when the three technologies coexisted and simultaneously shared the same IP core. We attempted to ascertain the impact of this type of heterogeneity on end-to-end performance. It was found that this heterogeneity in the wireless access portion of the network can improve, degrade or have no impact on application performance depending on the network conditions and the application itself. Some key research challenges in Fifth Generation wireless communications are heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks (HC-RANS), backward compatiblity with 4G/3G networks and providing low-latency and QoE. To achieve end-to-end QoS guarantees in such settings the interface with the core must also be addressed, especially when backward compatibility is to be assured. This simulation study attempts to highlight the impact of this type of heterogeneity on network performance.