<title>QoS of streaming video traffic over UMTS networks</title>

Abstract

There are four different levels of QoS traffic classes stipulated in UMTS specifications, which UMTS network need to support. These traffic classes are: Conversational, Streaming, Interactive, and Background. The main distinguishing factor between these classes is how delay sensitive the traffic is. Video stream class of traffic for a broadband wireless network has lot of challenges to overcome; principal among them is the preservation of time delay variation between information entities within a flow. In this paper we model video stream traffic over an UMTS network and examine end-to-end delay variation. Using the results we discuss the architectural implications of radio access network (UTRAN), core network, and the video server on the overall delay. In addition we also analyze the performance impacts of the underlying transport and network layer protocols.