Global Challenges The third generation mobile telecommunication technologies and the increasing popularity of Smartphone have greatly driven user demand for mobile broadband services. Explosi ve growth of data traffic and the challenge of increasing network capacity force mobile carriers to upgrade their networks and i ncrease the network transmission rate. The LTE technology is the best option for all the operators across the globe.
In the LTE era, the time has come for mobile operators to move to voice over LTE (VoLTE). Globally, voice is still the major revenue source for the telecommunications industry, and will probably still be when LTE goes mainstream. However, basic voice may not be enough to remain relevant in an LTE environment, because subscriber communication is shifting from plai n voice to rich & quality voice. So, What is VoLTE? and how does the VoLTE will impact operators network when it comes to us, here we will have a deep dive into the VoLTE voice calls and to discover the possibilities of the VoLTE, both to benefits Huawei & Operators. VoLTE Architectures Before we starts, lets have a look into the complete network architectures proposed by 3GPP on this VoLTE, which is to replace the CSFB currently, thats experienci ng delay, long latency, and also no significant voice quality improvements compare to legacy 2G/3G CS calls. Below is the complete network architecture of VoLTE interworking between EUTRAN, EPC, CS Domain, PS Domain & IMS network.
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Huawei VoLTE network consists of the operation support layer, service layer, core layer, access layer, and termi nal layer. In the LTE or 2G/3G networks, subscribers can use CSFB, Single Radio, and Dual Radio terminals to access the VoLTE network.
Huawei VoLTE solution builds IMS and LTE on a li ve CS domain to provide E2E quality of service (QoS) guarantee, high-quality voice and video calls, and rich data services. With this solution, carriers can evolve their 2G/3G networks to LTE networks to extend their business from offeri ng voice-only to multimedia-rich voice. Subscribers can use various LTE terminals such as CSFB, Single Radio, and Dual Radio termi nals to access an LTE network or 2G/3G network. When subscribers move out of LTE coverage, the LTE network smoothly hands over calls to a 2G/3G network. Centrali zed service provisioni ng, network management, and chargi ng are available i n the VoLTE architecture.
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VoLTE (Voice over LTE) wi ll be a reality soon, as operators around the world are completing their field tests and prepare to roll out voice and other IMS-based services to the eagerly awaiting public and to gain the leading position in their respective countries in order to win the market shares. Actually, in real life, the public probably doesnt care about VoLTE. All they want is good quality, high defi nition HD voice calls to complement their high-speed wireless data services. VoLTE is positioned to deli ver the goods, but how does it compare with other wireless voice solutions such as 2G/3G CS calls? We can answer that question in a few manners, but lets start with somethi ng easy, which is [how many VoLTE calls can an LTE cell support?] VoLTE Packet Size As it turns out, that question doesnt have a simple answer. It depends on a lot of variables, including the voice coder choices, the RF conditions in the cell, the Huawei eNBs scheduler algorithm, the 3GPP protocol releases options, and so on. To keep this discussion at manageable levels, lets concentrate on one particular aspect of VoLTE capacity: how many Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) are needed to deliver the traffic for one VoLTE call over a typical LTE Uu air i nterface? Lets assume for the moment that the operator has deployed channel bandwidth of 10 MHz LTE radio channels(Which is most operators are deployi ng their LTE services at phase 1 stage). This is fairly typical to provides 50 PRBs per millisecond on the downlink (somehow it will be lesser than 50 PRBs resources on the upli nk, due to the PUCCH configuration & limitations). Lets further presume that VoLTE is configured to use the Adapti ve Multi -Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) 12.65 coder, and that Robust Header Compression (RoHC) is enabled over the air interface which to reduce the overhead consumption over the LTE air interface. Huawei VoLTE scheduli ng are based on 20ms per Time-Transmission-Interval, TTI( Huawei Proprietary), and the AMR-WB 12.65 coder generates 253 bits of coded speech every 20 ms (a net data rate of 12.65 kbps). In order to deliver each voice services to the UE, additional protocol headers are needed, such as an RTP header (typically 12 bytes), a UDP header (8 bytes), and an IPv6 header (40 bytes). This bri ngs the total packet length up to some 733 bits every 20 ms.
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RoHC (Robust Overhead Compression), however, will replace with RTP, UDP and IP headers with a much smaller RoHC header before the packet is actually transmitted over the air. The length of the RoHC header will vary depending on the particular circumstances, but it will average around 3 bytes, or 24 bits. The RLC and MAC layers will add their own overhead, so the end result is that the air interface will have to transport roughly 300 bits of data for every VoLTE packet scheduled to one User. VoLTE vs. PRBs Now we need to relate the above data si ze back i nto our LTE Air Interface resources. A single PRB has 12 subcarriers and 14 symbols over the course of 1 ms, or 12 x 14 = 168 resource elements (REs).
Some of those REs are occupied by the PDCCH (Assumi ng max 3 symbols are used for PDCCH) and the downli nk reference signals RS, leaving about 120 REs per PRB to carry data on the downlink.
N RB DL x R x R x R R x x R R x x R x R x x R R x x R R x R x R x R x R PDSCH Symbol Mapping PDSCH Symbols Subframe Reserved for Control N S C R B S u b c a r r i e r s
=
1 2
Physical Resource Block Resource Element NSymb DL
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Each RE carries 2, 4 or 6 coded bits, depending on the modulation scheme in effect (QPSK, 16QAM or 64QAM, respecti vely), but some of those bits will be data bits, and some will be error protection bits. So how many data bits will fit in a si ngle PRB? That depends on the specific RF conditions i n the cell which will be feedback by the User on the uplink, that will be Channel Quality Indicator, CQI table below.
Lets see what happens under good (CQI = 15), average (CQI = 7) and poor (CQI = 1) situations. CQI 15 transmissions use 64QAM modulation and a 948/1024 = 0.926 effecti ve coding rate, which means that each RE holds 6 x 0.926 = 5.55 data bits on average. A si ngle PRB can then carry 120 x 5.55 = 666 data bits, or the equi valent of two VoLTE voice samples. LTE cant CQI Index Modulation Code Rate x 1024 Efficiency 0 out of range 1 QPSK 78 0.1523 2 QPSK 120 0.2344 3 QPSK 193 0.3770 4 QPSK 308 0.6016 5 QPSK 449 0.8770 6 QPSK 602 1.1758 7 16QAM 378 1.4766 8 16QAM 490 1.9141 9 16QAM 616 2.4063 10 64QAM 466 2.7305 11 64QAM 567 3.3223 12 64QAM 666 3.9023 13 64QAM 772 4.5234 14 64QAM 873 5.1152 15 64QAM 948 5.5547
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allocate less than one PRB per user, though, so well count this as one PRB per VoLTE call. CQI 7 transmissions use 16QAM modulation and a 378/1024 = 0.369 coding rate, resulti ng i n 4 x 0.369 x 120 = 177 data bits. In other words, two PRBs are needed to carry a si ngle VoLTE voice sample. CQI 1 transmissions use QPSK modulation and a 78/1024 = 0.076 coding rate, supporti ng 2 x 0.076 x 120 = 18 data bits per PRB. This means that a single VoLTE packet requires about 16 PRBs. VoLTE by the Numbers So how many VoLTE calls can we squeeze i nto a 10 MHz LTE channel? Voice samples are generated every 20 ms, so if everythi ng li nes up exactly right (and no retransmissions are needed), then twenty VoLTE calls can share the same set of PRBs, one after the other. The maximum number of VoLTE calls that can be carried is then determi ned by: ((Number of Available PRBs) / (Number of PRBs per VoLTE Call)) x 20 Here are the results, per CQI:
Thus, how realistic are these numbers? There are many presumptions built i n to this calculation, most of which wouldnt hold true out in the real world: All users in a cell would not report exactly the same CQI value, and a cell where every UE reports CQI value 1 is basically unusable. VoLTE packet arrivals would not be perfectly distributed across the 20 ms coding i ntervals. Most packets would require at least one HARQ retransmission, especially at lower CQI values, which consumes additional PRBs. Some capacity needs to be reserved for non-VoLTE (data) subscribers. The upli nk has a lower capacity than the downlink, i n terms of the number of PRBs available and the efficiency of the transmissions.
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VoLTE Conclusions Nevertheless, this document provides some hints i nto what the operators can expect to see when VoLTE is turned on in the field. Under good RF conditions, LTE can deli ver VoLTE packets quickly and efficiently, with enough capacity left over for other users. Under poor conditions, LTE will struggle to support even a handful of users. The reality is that, in general, VoLTE is expected to have a call capacity comparable to other wireless voice solutions, like UMTS and CDMA2000 1x, on the order of 200 to 300 users per cell under 10MHz bandwidth. The challenge for the operators is to manage the end-to-end voice quality, and to juggle the conflicting demands of voice and data users.