Quality Of Service Control Mechanisms Research Articles

QoS Management for XR Traffic in 5G NR: A Multi-Layer System View and End-to-End Evaluation

Extended reality (XR) applications are gaining a lot of momentum in the industry and consumer market. XR applications are characterized by multiple simultaneous data flows with different Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements, imposing the need for advanced QoS management in 5G networks. Compared to 4G, the 5G NR technology has been designed with enhanced QoS support, by introducing the concept of QoS flows and an additional layer for QoS handling. However, recent studies show that additional QoS enhancements are needed in 5G to support the massive adoption of XR services. 3GPP envisions to include some enhancements for XR traffic in 5G-Advanced. In this paper, we review the current 5G QoS framework and study potential design improvements to fulfill XR QoS requirements in future cellular networks. We study QoS control procedures for XR traffics at different layers of the 5G NR protocol stack, including the proper configuration of radio access and core networks. In particular, we analyze various architectures for handling the peculiarities of XR, such as time-constraint and multi-flow applications. Also, we present XR traffic adaptation mechanisms at the application layer, to properly adapt XR traffic statistics to the actual 5G radio environment, and QoS schedulers for the MAC layer, leading to cross-layer performance optimization between XR application and 5G radio access network. Finally, we provide a validation study and end-to-end evaluation of QoS control mechanisms by simulating realistic mixed traffic scenarios in a 5G NR system-level simulator based on ns-3.

Statistical QoS Control of Network Coded Multipath Routing in Large Cognitive Machine-to-Machine Networks

Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication enables many applications such as smart grid, vehicular safety, and health care among many others. To achieve ubiquitous data transportation among objects and the surrounding environment, deploying spectrum sharing M2M communications with existing wireless networks is a must. A general large-scale cognitive M2M network (CM2MN), adopting cognitive radio technology, consists of multiradio systems, the primary system (PS), and secondary system(s) with tremendous cooperative cognitive machines, under heterogeneous wireless architecture. For these CM2MNs, due to dynamic spectrum access (DSA) nature, there exists possibly unidirectional opportunistic wireless fading links and thus traditional flow control mechanisms at link level do not fit anymore. Furthermore, effective end-to-end quality-of-service (QoS) control is still required to provide a reliable transportation for such multihop CM2M communications. Facing the above challenges, we propose a novel statistical QoS control mechanism through cooperative relaying, realizing virtual multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communications at session level . In particular, a probabilistic network coded routing algorithm and the statistical QoS guarantee are first proposed to coordinate and cooperate tremendous machines. Next, based on the proposed guarantee and routing algorithm, the statistical QoS control mechanism is designed to enable MIMO communications for the session traffic. Specifically, the diversity mode is used to deal with PS’s opportunistic nature and wireless fading, and the spatial multiplexing mode is employed to obtain the maximum end-to-end throughput. Simulation results confirm that under our control solution, the great improvements of end-to-end delay violation probability are obtained, thus practically facilitating network coded multipath routing in large CM2MNs.

A Distributed Continua AHD System with ZigBee/PAN-IF Gateway and Continua QoS Control Mechanism

In a residential or nursing home environment, using ZigBee/802.15.4 wireless network specifically to collect and gather various types of personal health data proves to be a feasible choice. The Continua Guidelines has defined both the sensor-LAN IF (sensor Local Area Network Interface) PHD (Personal Health Device) and PAN IF (Personal Area Network Interface) PHD, but only a Continua certified sensor-LAN IF PHD with Zigbee HC (Health Care) profile can connect with Continua AHD (Application Hosting Device) through Zigbee/802.15.4 network and allows data communicating between AHD and PHDs. In this paper, we present a distributed Continua AHD system design that divides the AHD device containing Continua PAN IF into Continua AHD Host and Continua AHD Gateway with communication through ZigBee/802.15.4 network. Under this structure, a Continua PHD connects with a Continua AHD Host through Continua AHD Gateway within ZigBee/802.15.4 network. One immediate advantage of the proposed system is that both of the Continua sensor-LAN IF and PAN IF PHDs can connect with Continua AHD (Host) through ZigBee/802.15.4 network. To further address the QoS (Quality of Service) issue for Continua PAN IF message transmission in a ZigBee network, we present a software approach to automatically determine the types of packet transmitted and execute Continua QoS control. Together with the QoS mechanism in the enhanced ZigBee MAC Layer, this approach realizes a complete Continua QoS control mechanism for the distributed AHD system.

Mixed QoS Controlled Wireless Streaming Media Transmission Strategy

Streaming media applications is currently limited by high bandwidth requirements. It is a challenging problem to provide the required quality of service (QoS) for the efficient transmission of video data under the varying network conditions such as the time-varying packet loss and fluctuating bandwidth. On Internet the most important part for streaming media transmission application is QoS control mechanism which including two kinds of QoS control method, based on end to end and network. A wireless streaming media forward platform based on the mixed quality-of-service (QoS) control system is introduced in this paper. The theoretical knowledge related to the quality of service and mixed quality of service control of the feasibility and characteristics are analyzed, and introduced a comprehensive quality of service in theory. This system combines network control and end to end quality of service control. The network of the system is optimized to support quality of service, using the underlying network devices, network bandwidth optimization, network structure adapted to meet the both ends of the quality of service. At both ends, from the delay, jitter, etc. are adjusted, by the addition of the timestamp and other information on the dynamic adjustment of the speed of data transmission. Through improving the control of two ends QoS and media streaming forward server, the video streaming from ships on the sea is transferred to the Internet by microwave and then linked to common Internet and mobile phone users through carrier networks(wired and wireless), which realized the real time supervision.

Session‐based end‐to‐end policy control in 3GPP evolved packet system

AbstractThe Third Generation Partnership Project specifies a solution to handle the heterogeneity of future networks, including quality of service (QoS) and charging aspects. This solution utilizes a policy‐based approach based on the policy and charging control (PCC) architecture, which is an integral component of the evolved packet system (EPS). The specifications for EPS are being finalized with the evolved packet core (EPC) central to this framework. The EPC is a simplified, flat, all IP‐based architecture that supports mobility between heterogeneous access networks and incorporates an evolved QoS concept based on the PCC framework. A critical open issue within EPS is the provisioning of end‐to‐end QoS enabled paths. This article proposes enhancements to the EPC/PCC framework that extend the end‐to‐end inter‐domain mechanisms to discover the signaling routes at the service control layer, and use this information to determine the paths traversed by the media at the resource control layer. Because the approach operates at these layers, it is compatible with existing transport networks and exploits already existing QoS control mechanisms. A real testbed implementation, comprising free and open source software, is used to evaluate the proposed mechanisms. The obtained results show that the framework has an acceptable effect on session setup delay and core traffic overhead in a range of scenario ranging from simple, to typical, to worst case. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

DLB: a novel real-time QoS control mechanism for multimedia transmission

This paper presents a new real-time Quality of Service (QoS) scheme, called Relaxed (m, k)-firm, for multimedia flow transmission which can tolerate occasional packet drops. In contrast to traditional real-time constraint, Relaxed (m, k)-firm requires the transmission delay constraint on a group of any k consecutive packets instead of imposing a transmission delay constraint per packet. Due to this relaxation, this novel scheme can achieve high resource utilisation. A new traffic control mechanism, called Double-Leaks Bucket (DLB), is also proposed to selectively drop a proportion of packets in case of network congestion while still guaranteeing the R-(m, k)-firm constraint.

QoS control for streaming service in UMTS networks

This paper addresses the end-to-end quality of service (QoS) architecture and mechanisms for Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) networks. It presents specific QoS control mechanisms and algorithms for network performance engineering for real time services, in particular streaming applications. The paper concentrates on QoS control in the UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) since it is often a bottleneck in end-to-end UMTS bearer performance, especially in the initial stages of network deployment. It discusses several QoS implementation mechanisms, including air interface resource and congestion control, call admission control, mobility control, backhaul bandwidth management, and network element queuing control. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of these controls, and ways they can be used to guarantee streaming bearer performance. In addition, real measurement results are given for a commercial end-to-end UMTS network. © 2007 Alcatel-Lucent.

A call admission control framework for voice over WLANs

In this article a call admission control framework is presented for voice over wireless local area networks (WLANs). The framework, called WLAN voice manager, manages admission control for voice over IP (VoIP) calls with WLANs as the access networks. WLAN voice manager interacts with WLAN medium access control (MAC) layer protocols, soft-switches (VoIP call agents), routers, and other network devices to perform end-to-end (ETE) quality of service (QoS) provisioning and control for VoIP calls originated from WLANs. By implementing the proposed WLAN voice manager in the WLAN access network, a two-level ETE VoIP QoS control mechanism can be achieved: level 1 QoS for voice traffic over WLAN medium access and level 2 QoS for ETE VoIP services in the networks with WLANs as the local access. The implementation challenges of this framework are discussed for both level 1 and level 2. Possible solutions to the implementation issues are proposed and other remaining open issues are also addressed.

Multimedia data transmission and control using active networks

Active network is an excellent paradigm to provide customized network services to the applications by allowing them to inject specific program to the intermediate routers. Active networks provide the flexibility for the application programs to modify the services that a router can provide to suit its specific needs. Therefore, it has the potential to provide application-level quality of service (QoS) at the transport and network layers. In this paper, we present an adaptable network architecture, called ADNET, which provides mechanisms to allow the application adapt to the resource constraints to achieve improved QoS. Our design aims to unify different QoS control mechanisms (e.g. integrated services, differentiated services, and active networks) together to provide a wide range of network services to all users to meet their specific needs. We propose a new fragmentation scheme with low overhead (<5%) to transfer large-size multimedia data. Using this fragmentation scheme, a new transport protocol, called ACtive Transport Protocol (ACTP) is integrated with the design. We use a new measure, called usefulness, to better reflect the QoS perceived by the end-users. In our experiments, we compare different schemes of video transmissions: non-active transport protocols such as UDP and TCP with IP fragmentation, ACTP framework with active networks, and ACTP framework without active networks. The ACTP scheme with active networks outperforms the others in achieving application level QoS.

Adaptive QoS control of multimedia transmission over band-limited networks

Consumers increasingly demand high quality of service (QoS) for multimedia applications. Application-layer QoS control mechanisms that do not make specific references to coding semantics tend to provide the most robust solutions for delivery of multimedia data over band-limited networks. We propose an adaptive and robust QoS algorithm for band-limited networks that integrates explicit receiver-sender rate control, rate shaping with multiple quantization parameters and adaptive forward error correction (FEC). Experimental results indicate that an average improvement of 0.5 dB PSNR can be achieved compared to other methods.

An end‐to‐end solution for Internet lecture delivery

Although the Internet offers great opportunities for educational purposes, its full potential cannot be realized unless it can be used effectively for lecture delivery across vast distances. However, the best‐effort nature of the current Internet means that many technical issues have to be resolved to ensure that the quality of video and audio play‐out will be acceptable. Presents an end‐to‐end solution for Internet delivery of “live” and recorded lectures based on a one‐to‐many server‐clients topology. The focus is on low‐bandwidth technology to minimize the students’ client side equipment overheads. Describes the development of an integrated quality of service control mechanism comprising both congestion control and error control and how the solution has been implemented as a Web‐based learn‐on‐demand system. Presents a performance analysis of the system.

An agent architecture for strategy-centric adaptive QoS control in flexible videoconference system

In this paper, we propose an agent architecture to improve flexibility of a videoconference system with strategy-centric adaptive QoS (Quality of Service) control mechanism. The proposed architecture realizes more flexibility by changing their QoS control strategies dynamically. To switch the strategies, system considers the properties of problems occurred on QoS and status of problem solving process. This architecture is introduced as a part of knowledge base of agent that deals with cooperation between software module of videoconference systems. We have implemented the mechanism, and our prototype system shows its capability of flexible problem solving against the QoS degradation, along with other possible problems within the given time limitation. Thus we confirmed that the proposed architecture can improve its flexibility of a videoconference system compared to traditional systems.

IQCM: a robust and efficient multimedia data recovery mechanism

Despite the increasing popularity of the Internet as a communications medium, the bulk of its traffic is still made up of non-multimedia data. The best effort nature of the current Internet Protocol (IPv4) does not provide any quality of service (QoS) guarantees for high bandwidth applications such as real-time multimedia transmission, which have severe constraints on bandwidth, packet loss and delay. We describe current QoS control mechanisms and propose an integrated QoS control mechanism (IQCM). IQCM is a 5-stage mechanism that performs network congestion control, forward error correction (FEC) and error-resilient coding. To support generic data, our focus is primarily on the transport layer rather than compression semantics. IQCM may be used to support multimedia data delivery over the Internet, such as Web-based video-on-demand systems. Experimental results have validated IQCM's ability to control packet loss rates and enhance the quality of multimedia play-out.

InfoFilter: Supporting quality of service for fresh information delivery

With the explosive growth of the Internet and World Wide Web comes a dramatic increase in the number of users that compete for the shared resources of distributed system environments. Most implementations of application servers and distributed search software do not distinguish among requests to different web pages. This has the implication that the behavior of application servers is quite unpredictable. Applications that require timely delivery of fresh information consequently suffer the most in such competitive environments. This paper presents a model of quality of service (QoS) and the design of a QoS-enabled information delivery system that implements such a QoS model. The goal of this development is two-fold. On one hand, we want to enable users or applications to specify the desired quality of service requirements for their requests so that application-aware QoS adaptation is supported throughout the Web query and search processing. On the other hand, we want to enable an application server to customize how it should respond to external requests by setting priorities among query requests and allocating server resources using adaptive QoS control mechanisms. We introduce the Infopipe approach as the systems support architecture and underlying technology for building a QoS-enabled distributed system for fresh information delivery.

Table-based QoS control for embedded real-time systems

This paper proposes a new QoS control scheme that is suited for embedded real-time systems. Our scheme focused on real-time systems where both device control and multimedia processing are required. Such systems needs to keep timing constraints of control tasks while providing the highest possible quality of service(QoS) to multimedia processing tasks. Although many QoS control schemes are proposed and used in distributed multimedia systems, they are not suited for such real-time systems. Their QoS control policies cannot exactly keep the timing constraints of control tasks.To overcome this problem we chose a scheme which uses a table describing resource requirements of all tasks. Resource allocations for tasks and total resource utilization in a system can be calculated from the table. Using our scheme, any QoS control policies, such as a fair-share policy or a priority based policy, can be implemented. In other words, it has become possible for the first time to allow the intention of system designers to be directly reflected on QoS control.We have implemented a CPU time QoS control mechanism based on our proposed scheme and evaluated it on a &amp;mu;-ITRON Ver. 3.0 based real-time OS. The evaluation results demonstrate that the QoS control scheme can keep deadline misses low and CPU utilization high under an overloaded state. The results also show that overhead of the QoS control mechanism is small enough to support both multimedia and control applications.