Multimedia Application Support on WiMAX: Cost / Benefit ...vmbern/publications/pdf/... · Fixed and Mobile WiMAX showed interesting capabilities as a Broadband Wireless Access tech-nology

Department of Informatics EngineeringFaculty of Sciences and Technology

University of Coimbra

Multimedia Application Support on WiMAX:Cost / Benefit Analysis

Vıtor Manuel Henriques Bernardo

Master Thesis submitted to the University of Coimbra

July 10, 2009

Multimedia Application Support on WiMAX:Cost / Benefit Analysis

Master Thesis submitted to the University of Coimbra

Author:Vıtor Manuel Henriques Bernardo

Advisor:Marılia Pascoal Curado

July 10, 2009

Abstract

There are several restrictions in the current access wireless technologies, such as General PacketRadio Service (GPRS) and High Speed Packet Access (HSPA), for the transmission of the multi-media applications. Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a broadbandwireless technology based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16standard and aims at enabling the development of wireless broadband services anytime and any-where. Therefore, it is a strong candidate to support multimedia applications in various deploymentscenarios.

This work presents the state of the art of the WiMAX technology and discusses the comparisonwith its major competitors. The assessment includes a technical study and a thorough conceptualanalysis of the trade-off cost/benefit of the technologies under evaluation. A real testbed evaluationof the capabilities of both Fixed and Mobile WiMAX to support the most popular multimedia appli-cations, Voice over IP (VoIP) and Video Streaming, is performed.

The experimental study allowed the quantification of the scalability levels supported by Fixedand Mobile WiMAX for the transmission of multiple VoIP and Video Streaming flows. Moreover,the results obtained in the scenarios tested, using different VoIP CODECs and videos with severaldistinct compression levels, provided insight on the tradeoffs that Internet Service Providers mayachieve in order to provide good quality services to the maximum amount of clients. Overall, bothFixed and Mobile WiMAX showed interesting capabilities as a Broadband Wireless Access tech-nology for the support of multimedia applications in the next generation communication systems.

keywords: IEEE 802.16, Multimedia Applications, Quality of Experience, Quality of Service,WiMAX

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Abstract ix

List of Figures xvii

List of Tables xix

Abbreviations and acronyms xxi

1 Introduction 11.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3 Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4 Thesis Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 The WiMAX Technology 52.1 The 802.16 standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.1.1 Physical Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.1.2 Medium Access Control (MAC) Layer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.1.3 Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102.1.4 QoS Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.1.5 Mobility Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.2 Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access(WiMAX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122.2.1 WiMAX Forum Network Reference Model (NRM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.2.2 Mobile WiMAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3 WiMAX Competitors 173.1 Second Generation of mobile phone standards and technology (2G) . . . . . . . . 17

3.1.1 Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.1.2 General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.1.3 Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution (EDGE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.2 Third Generation of mobile phone standards and technology (3G) . . . . . . . . . 193.2.1 Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) . . . . . . . . . . 193.2.2 High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3.3 Fourth Generation of mobile phone standards and technology (4G) . . . . . . . . . 203.3.1 Evolved HSPA (HSPA+) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

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3.3.2 Long Term Evolution (LTE) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213.3.3 Mobile Broadband Wireless Access (MBWA) - IEEE 802.20 . . . . . . . . 21

3.4 WLAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223.5 Comparison between 3GPP, Wi-Fi and WiMAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4 Multimedia Appplications 274.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274.2 Transport Procotols for Multimedia Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.3 Network Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284.4 Voice Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294.5 Video Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304.6 WiMAX for Multimedia Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304.7 Voice Quality Evaluation Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

5 Evaluation of VoIP over a Fixed WiMAX Network 335.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335.2 Testbed Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345.3 Tests Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355.4 Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

5.4.1 Overestimated Bandwidth Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.4.2 Underestimated Bandwidth Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405.4.3 Evaluation Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

6 Evaluation of VoIP over a Mobile WiMAX Network 456.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.2 Testbed setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456.3 Experimental Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

6.3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466.3.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476.3.3 Evaluation Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

7 An Operator View of Video Streaming over Fixed WiMAX Networks 537.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537.2 Testbed setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

7.2.1 Video evaluation tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.3 Tests overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557.4 Experimental Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

7.4.1 Suitable link conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567.4.2 Limited link conditions Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 597.4.3 Evaluation Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

8 Video Streaming over Mobile WiMAX 658.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 658.2 Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

8.2.1 Testbed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668.2.2 Traffic Generation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678.2.3 Tests Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

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8.2.4 Evaluation Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688.3 Experimental Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

8.3.1 Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 698.3.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

8.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

9 Project Management 779.1 First Semester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779.2 Second Semester . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

10 Conclusion 81

Bibliography 87

Appendices 89Appendix A - VoIP on Fixed WiMAX results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91Appendix B - Video over Fixed WiMAX - Suitable Link Conditions charts . . . . . . . . 93Appendix C - Video over Fixed WiMAX - Limited Link Conditions charts . . . . . . . . 97Appendix D - Publications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Appendix E - COST TMA Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

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List of Figures

2.1 IEEE 802.16 - Reference Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62.2 IEEE 802.16 - Physical States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82.3 WiMAX - Network Reference Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132.4 Handover methods supported in Mobile WiMAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152.5 Mobile WiMAX Evolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.1 3GPP flat architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203.2 Relationship between Speed and Mobility in Wireless Systems . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5.1 Fixed WiMAX testbed, compliant with NRM of WiMAX Forum . . . . . . . . . . 345.2 Overestimated bandwidth - Average One-Way Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385.3 Overestimated bandwidth - Average Throughput . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395.4 Overestimated bandwidth - Average Packet Loss Rate and Jitter . . . . . . . . . . 395.5 Overestimated bandwidth - MOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405.6 Underestimated bandwidth - Average One-way Delay and Packet Loss Rate . . . . 415.7 Underestimated bandwidth - Jitter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415.8 Underestimated bandwidth - MOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

6.1 Mobile WiMAX testbed architecture for VoIP assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 466.2 Downstream One-way delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476.3 Upstream One-way delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 486.4 Downstream Packet Loss Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496.5 Upstream Packet Loss Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496.6 Downstream Mean Opinion Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506.7 Upstream Mean Opinion Score . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

7.1 University of Coimbra Fixed WiMAX testbed architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547.2 Simplified diagram of the Evalvid framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557.3 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 1 video stream . . . . . . . . . . . . 577.4 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 9 simultaneous videos streams . . . 577.5 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 10 simultaneous videos streams . . . 587.6 Suitable Link Conditions - Mean Opinion Score degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . 587.7 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 1 video stream . . . . . . . . . . . . 597.8 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 2 simultaneous videos streams . . . 607.9 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 5 simultaneous videos streams . . . 617.10 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 9 simultaneous videos streams . . . 617.11 One-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 10 simultaneous videos streams . . . 617.12 Limited Link Conditions - Mean Opinion Score degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

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7.13 Limited Link Conditions - Mean Opinion Score degradation . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

8.1 Mobile WiMAX testbed architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668.2 Sample frame from the Akiyo movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 678.3 Multiple client evaluation methodology schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 688.4 CBR-256kbps video one-way end-to-end delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 708.5 CBR-512kbps video one-way end-to-end delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718.6 VBR video one-way end-to-end delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 718.7 Complete frame loss rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 728.8 Packet loss rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 738.9 Mean Opinion Score (MOS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

9.1 First semester initially proposed schedule gantt chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779.2 First semester effective schedule Gantt chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779.3 Second semester initially proposed schedule gantt chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 789.4 Real second semester schedule Gantt chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

B.1 Suitable Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 1 video stream . . 93B.2 Suitable Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 2 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93B.3 Suitable Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 3 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94B.4 Suitable Link Conditions one-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 4 simultane-

ous video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94B.5 Suitable Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 5 simultaneous






video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96C.1 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 1 video stream . . 97C.2 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 2 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97C.3 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 3 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98C.4 Limited Link Conditions one-way delay PDF and packet loss rate with 4 simultane-

ous video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98C.5 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 5 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98C.6 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 6 simultaneous

video streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

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C.7 Limited Link Conditions one-way PDF and packet loss rate with 7 simultaneousvideo streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99




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List of Tables

2.1 IEEE 802.16 scheduling services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3.1 Wireless technologies comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.1 VoIP CODECS bandwidth requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294.2 Applications minimal requirements on WiMAX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314.3 Values of γ1, γ2 and γ3 for each CODEC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.1 Bandwidth measure in Base Station for each protocol/number of clients . . . . . . 365.2 Base Station PHY and MAC parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.3 Reservations performed in underestimated tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375.4 DCCP configuration values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

7.1 Relationship between original and long Akiyo videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 557.2 Properties of used videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

A.1 Overestimeted bandwidth tests with UDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91A.2 Overestimeted bandwidth tests with DCCP CCID2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91A.3 Overestimeted bandwidth tests with DCCP CCID3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91A.4 Underestimeted bandwidth tests with UDP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92A.5 Underestimeted bandwidth tests with DCCP CCID2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92A.6 Understimeted bandwidth tests with DCCP CCID3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

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Abbreviations and acronyms

1G First Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

2G Second Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

3G Third Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

3GPP Third Generation Partnership Project

4G Fourth Generation of mobile phone standards and technology

8PSK 8 Phase Shift Keying

AAA Authentication, Authorization and Accounting

ARQ Automatic Repeat reQuest

ASN Access Service Network

ATM Asynchronous Transfer Mode

BE Best Effort

CCID Congestion Control IDentifier

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

CEPT Conference Europeenne des Postes et Telecommunications

CID Connection Identifier

CPE Customer Premises Equipment

CPS Common Part Sublayer

CS Convergence Sublayer

CSN Connectivity Service Network

DAMA Demand Assignment Multiple Access

DCCP Datagram Congestion Control Protocol

DSL Digital Subscriber Line

EAP Extensible Authentication Protocol

EDGE Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution

EPC Evolved Packet Core

ertPS Extended Real-Time Polling Service

EUTRAN Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network

FBSS Fast Base Station Switching

FDD Frequency Division Duplexing

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FEC Forward Error Correction

FFT Fast Fourier Transform

GPCS Generic Packet Convergence Sublayer

GPRS General Packet Radio Service

GSM Global System for Mobile Communications

HHO Hard Handover

HSDPA High Speed Download Packet Access

HSPA High Speed Packet Access

HSPA+ Evolved HSPA

HSUPA High Speed Uplink Packet Access

HVS Human Visual System

IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

IETF Internet Engineering Task Force

IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform

IP Internet Protocol

IPPM IP Performance Metrics

IPTV Internet Protocol Television

LAN Local Area Network

LOS Line of Sight

LTE Long Term Evolution

MAC Medium Access Control

MBWA Mobile Broadband Wireless Access

MDHO Macro Diversity Handover

MIB Management Information Base

MIH Media Independent Handover

MIMO Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output

MIP Mobile IP

MMS Multimedia Message Service

MOS Mean Opinion Score

NAP Network Access Provider

NAT Network Address Translation

NCMS Network Control and Management System

NLOS Non Line of Sight

NRM Network Reference Model

nrtPS Non-Real Time Polling Service

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NSP Network Service Provider

OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access

PDF Probability Distribution Function

PHY Physical Layer

PKM Privacy Key Management

PMP Point-to-Multipoint

PPP Point-to-Point Protocol

PSNR Peak Signal Noise to Ratio

QAM Quadratic Amplitude Modulation

QoE Quality of Experience

QoS Quality of Service

QPSK Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying

RTP Real-Time Protocol

rtPS Real-Time Polling Service

SAE System Architecture Evolution

SAP Service Access Point

SDU Service Data Unit

SFID Service Flow Identifier

SMS Short Message Service

SNMP Simple Network Management Protocol

SSIM Structural Similarity

TCP Transport Control Protocol

TDD Time Division Duplexing

TDMA Time Division Multiple Access

TFRC TCP-Friendly Rate Control

UDP User Datagram Protocol

UGS Unsolicited Grant Service

UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications System

VBR Variable Bit Rate

VoIP Voice over IP

WAP Wireless Application Protocol

WCDMA Wideband Code Division Multiple Access

WiMAX Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access

WLAN Wireless Local Area Network

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1Introduction

This work presents the analysis of the trade-off cost/benefit of using the WiMAX technlogy totransmiting multimedia applications.

The first section presents the motivation for the work done. The next two sections describe theobjectives and author contributions, respectively. The last section shows the thesis organization.

1.1 Motivation

Today almost every person has Internet access, either at home or using mobile devices. In the lastyears, we have witnessed a change of the Internet contents, which include more and more multime-dia applications.

Broadband wired access technologies, such as Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), are well deployedand are able to fulfill the major requirements of almost all multimedia applications. Global Sys-tem for Mobile Communications (GSM) and High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) are the most welldeployed wireless technologies, but they are not enough for the current needs of many multimediaapplications, which need high bandwidth, low latency, among other requirements.

As new types of multimedia applications arise, more and more people will use them. Due tothe characteristics of these types of applications, the users’ demands of the access technology willalso become greater. Moreover, today everyone wants to the always connected to the Internet, ev-erywhere.

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a broadband wireless technol-ogy based on the IEEE 802.16 standard and aims at enabling the development of wireless broadbandservices anytime and anywhere. WiMAX can be used in various scenarios such as fixed, portable,nomadic and mobile.

1

2 Chapter 1. Introduction

Despite that WiMAX is not yet a widely deployed technology, it is a candidate for the last mileaccess in both urban and rural areas. Therefore, it is important to assess the capabilities of WiMAXto transmit multimedia applications, as well as, the trade-off between the cost and associated benefitsof using the WiMAX technology in these scenarios.

1.2 Objectives

The main objective of this work is to study the WiMAX technology capabilities integrated in anall-IP end-to-end architecture, to support multimedia applications.

Broadband capabilities of WiMAX, associated with the support of different levels of serviceand mobility, make this technology a strong candidate for last mile access in both urban and ruralareas. However, the analysis of the tradeoff cost/benefit of using this technology for both operatorsand end-users still needs to be addressed. This work aims at studying the feasibility of using theWiMAX technology to support multimedia applications in fixed and mobile scenarios.

The achievement of this challenging objective includes the study, on a real scenario test-bed, ofthe WiMAX technology performance integrated on an end-to-end IP architecture. Coupled with thistechnical study, a thorough conceptual analysis of the cost/benefit trade-off of using such a technol-ogy when compared with its main competitors, from General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) to LongTerm Evolution (LTE), will be targeted.

1.3 Contributions

The author has performed some important contributions to the assessment of WiMAX in nowa-days’ networks, as described next.

A detailed analysis of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 and WiMAXwas performed, in order to evaluate the current state of the art of the technology. A unique compari-son of WiMAX and its competitors was done. The author performed an overview of the technologiesunder study and played an important role in the definition of the comparison parameters. Moreover,a clear table comparing the more important technologies was done.

In order to evaluate multimedia applications on WiMAX, the major needs of each type of ap-plication were identified. A Fixed WiMAX testbed was configured in order to assess the capabil-ities of Fixed WiMAX to support VoIP applications. Moreover, the Datagram Congestion ControlProtocol (DCCP) with two different congestion control algorithms was tested against the User Data-gram Protocol (UDP), in order to evaluation the performance of each one to deliver Voice overIP (VoIP) on Fixed WiMAX.

The Fixed WiMAX testbed was reconfigured in order to show the potential of Fixed WiMAX tosupport video streaming, taking into account the operator view of the WiMAX channel utilizationand cost/benefit of employing different video compression levels in the transmission as well as the

1.3. Contributions 3

Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by the end-users.

In order to perform a unique multi-client video streaming evaluation over Mobile WiMAX,a complex Mobile WiMAX testbed encompassing one base station and four Customer PremiseEquipments (CPEs) were configured by the author. Moreover, to accomplish this evaluation morecorrectly, the author has also developed a new evaluation methodology by extending a well-knownevaluation framework.

The author also conducted a VoIP evaluation over Mobile WiMAX. To the best of his knowl-edge, this is the first study on a real WiMAX demonstrator that addresses both the use of differentCODECs and scalability, in a scenario with multiple CPEs and simultaneous upstream and down-stream traffic in a Mobile WiMAX testbed.

The author has submitted an application to a “Short-Term Scientific Mission” (STSM) of theCOST Action IC0703 “Data Traffic Monitoring and Analysis” (TMA). The COST TMA committeeapproved the application, which enable the author visit to the Converging Networks Laboratory ofVTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in Oulu, Finland. The tasks performed in the MobileWiMAX testbed have been performed in this laboratory. The author contributions were not limitedto the scope of this work and he also performed the evaluation of video transmission over TCP.Currently, the COST committee already approved the final results achieved within this STSM andthe final report from the author can be found in Appendix E.

In the course of this work three scientific articles were accepted for publication in internationalconferences, and a couple are planned to be submitted until September. The publications acceptedare the following:

V. Bernardo, L.Cordeiro, I. Caramelo, B. Sousa e M. Curado, E. Monteiro, “A Seamless Mobi-lity Scenario for IP over WiMAX”, 2nd International Workshop on Future Multimedia Networking- FMN 09, 22-23 June 2009, Coimbra, Portugal

This publication includes some work done by the author within the context of the WEIRD -WiMAX Extension to Isolated Research Data networks - European Project. This initial work wasenriched by the technological knowledge about WiMAX that the author obtained during the thesis,which was fundamental for the success of the paper.

Vitor Bernardo, Bruno Sousa, Marilia Curado, “VoIP over WiMAX: Quality of Experience Eval-uation”, IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC 2009) - 4th IEEE Workshopon multimedia Applications over Wireless Networks, MediaWiN 2009, 5 July 2009, Sousse, Tunisia

This article is an extended version of the VoIP over Fixed WiMAX evaluation presented in thisdocument.

Vitor Bernardo, Kostas Pentikousis, Jarno Pinola, Esa Piri, Marilia Curado, “Multi-client VideoStreaming over WirelessMAN-OFDMA”, submitted to the 4th ACM Workshop on Performance Mo-nitoring, Measuring and Evaluation of Heterogeneous Wireless and Wired Networks (4th ACMPM2HQ2N 2009), October 26-30, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

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10Conclusion

This thesis has addressed the WiMAX capabilities to support multimedia applications in nextgeneration networks. WiMAX is well positioned to be one of the main technologies for Broad-

band Wireless Access, mainly due to its native quality of service support, long range and high ca-pacity. There are however other drivers not directly related to the technological potential, such asgovernment strategies and the large investments already made by operators, which will influence thesolutions that will prevail in 4th Generation networks.

In this context, the work performed started with the analysis of the state-of-the-art technologiesin 3rd Generation networks and the candidates for 4th Generation networks, comparing WiMAXand the most challenging competitors. Then, an extensive experimental study concerning the eval-uation of WiMAX capabilities to support the most common multimedia applications namely, VoIPand video streaming, was performed on two WiMAX testbeds, one with Fixed WiMAX at the Uni-versity of Coimbra, and one with Mobile WiMAX at the Converging Networks Laboratory of VTTTechnical Research Centre of Finland in Oulu.

The experimental study allowed the quantification of the scalability levels supported by Fixedand Mobile WiMAX for the transmission of multiple VoIP and Video Streaming flows. In order toidentify the best approach to obtain the highest advantage from the WiMAX technology in whichconcerns the support of multimedia applications from a variable number of users, the evaluation ofVoIP was done with the most common CODECs, namely, G.711, G.723.1 and G.729.2, which havedistinct bandwidth requirements. Following a similar approach, video streaming was also evaluatedusing videos with different compression levels, ranging from the rather low 32kbps compressionrate, up to a variable bit rate encoded video, with 540kbps peak rate.

The evaluation of the WiMAX capabilities to support the VoIP and video streaming applicationswas performed taking into consideration the commonly used network level parameters, one-way de-lay and loss rate, and also quality of experience metrics, which depict the user perception about thequality of the communication system. The Mean Opinion Score metric was used to asses the quality

81

82 Chapter 10. Conclusion

of experience of both VoIP and video streaming, and the Structural Similarity Index metric was usedto measure the video streaming quality of experience in a more complete way. This dual assessmentapproach provides an integrated view of the system performance, being an important contributionthat can assist operators on network design and management tasks.

The results obtained in the scenarios tested provided insight on the tradeoffs that Internet Ser-vice Providers may establish in order to provide good quality services to the maximum amount ofclients. For instance, concerning the video evaluation, the results have shown that by using theCBR-256kbps video, it is possible to guarantee a good quality for twice more concurrent streamsthan with both CBR-512kbps and VBR versions. Taking these results into consideration, a moreconservative compression is able to satisfy a higher number of clients with a reasonable perceivedquality. Moreover, from the user perspective, the quality level obtained with the different com-pression levels is not significantly affected by using a lower compression. Overall, the results haveshown that the operators can maximize the number of supported users by deploying mechanismsthat adapt the video rate according to the network conditions. Such mechanisms will also improvethe overall quality of the videos when there are problems with a link or even when the link has avery limited amount of bandwidth available.

The work presented in this thesis has shown, both in the conceptual comparison between WiMAXand its main competitors, and in the results obtained with the extensive experimental evaluation per-formed, that Fixed and Mobile WiMAX have strong and competitive capabilities as a BroadbandWireless Access technology for the support of multimedia applications in the next generation com-munication systems.

It is the opinion of the author, that the future of the WiMAX technology will be directly affectedby the implementation on the market in the next couple of years. The first commercial version ofLTE is expected to be released in 2012, which means that, at this moment, WiMAX is two yearsahead of LTE. However, LTE is part of 3GPP and it will represent a smooth and not very expensivemigration for all the companies that have currently 3GPP systems, such as HSDPA.

The WiMAX can really play an important role in a different market, for instance, in marketsthat only have rudimentary telecommunication access, such as several countries in Africa and SouthAmerica.

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Multimedia Application Support on WiMAX: Cost / Benefit ...vmbern/publications/pdf/... · Fixed and Mobile WiMAX showed interesting capabilities as a Broadband Wireless Access tech-nology