QoS Load Differentiation Application in a UTRAN Live Network

Beatriz Garriga, Francisco Dominguez, Clara Serrano, Santiago Tenorio, Elia Asensio (1) Access NW Group Competence Centre (1) Radio and Tx Engineering Spain Vodafone Technology Madrid, Spain and whilst QoS is an end-to-end concept only QoS mechanisms in the UTRAN and its application in a real network are studied. II. QOS PARAMETERS

Abstract Quality of Service (QoS) Load Differentiation mechanisms allow a network to allocate resources to users in situations of capacity constraints depending on their priority. The need to apply QoS mechanisms is driven by the increased demand for finite resources and in the case of cellular networks this has been exacerbated largely due to HSPA data traffic growth. This paper describes results of a QoS investigation on a real live UTRAN network with a significant number of real users. The results presented show improvements in terms of throughput and delay. The trial led to the identification and confirmation of an optimum proportion of highest class users in a network under various traffic conditions initially via an HSPA traffic model then via real traffic profiles in the live network. This exercise has led to the identification and proposal of two new algorithms and are outlined in this paper: Iub congestion control is improved to prioritize users per node B (inter-cell) and a new scheduler algorithm is proposed to take into account the users/services delay depending on their priority. Keywords-component; QoS; HSPA; ARP; THP; TC;RRP;SPI; Throughput; Delay: Traffic Model

The QoS concept and architecture for UMTS networks is specified in [1]. QoS priorities to segment classes of customer are provisioned per user and APN in the HLR. The key QoS parameters used are summarized in Table 1
Traffic Class Transfer delay (ms) GBR (bps) ARP THP Conversational Class 100-max <=16000 1-15 (1) Streaming Class 280-max <=16000 1-15 (1) Interactive Class Background Class

1-15 (1) 1-15 (1)

1-15 (1)

(1) Range of values specified in [2]

Table 1: UMTS QoS Classes main parameters The main distinguishing factor between the four traffic classes is how delay-sensitive the traffic is. Real time services can be classified as conversational and streaming and non realtime services, usually considered as best effort, fall into two categories: interactive and background. In the UTRAN, when a Radio Access Bearer (RAB) is set up, a Radio Resource Priority (RRP) is assigned to that RAB based upon a combination of Traffic Class (TC), Allocation Retention Priority (ARP) and Traffic Handling Priority (THP) as in Table 2. (Where RAN Sharing is implemented, Operator Id is also used in the RNC. In this case the mapping to the Radio Resource Priority is different for every operator utilizing the shared network.)
Traffic Class Conversational ARP 1 2 3-7 8-14 1-4 5-10 11-14 1-7 1-7 1-14 1-4 5-10 11-14 Absent THP NA NA NA NA NA NA NA 1 2 3-14 NA NA NA NA Operator Id A B A-B NA A B A-B A-B A-B A-B A B A-B NA RRP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

I.

BACKGROUND

The combination of 3G data growth and technology evolution offering high peak rates has brought about the need for mechanisms that guarantee efficient resource handling whilst managing the resultant increasing data traffic. Where network capacity is limited, QoS (Quality of Service) mechanisms permit the ability to differentiate users and their subsequent resource allocation such that all customers receive a minimum performance in terms of throughput and delay according to their QoS profile (subscription). Traffic profiles across internet are largely heterogeneous e.g. with respect to volumes of data per customer there is a very uneven balance between light / normal users (web browsing, e-mail, picture upload and download, i-tunes) and heavy users (video streaming and peer2peer). Left unchecked this typical situation could result in disproportionate usage of resources by a small number of customers to the detriment of the remainder therefore a mechanism to prevent heavy users cannibalising available resources is required to ensure all customers needs are met. The Study and results presented in this document focuses on two types of HSPA traffic: Interactive and Background,

Streaming

Interactive

Background

Any Traffic class

Table 2: Radio resource priority mapping

978-1-4244-2517-4/09/$20.00 2009 IEEE

The numbers representing RRP are such that the lower numbers correspond to those users with higher priority. The range of RRP within UTRAN is restricted to 1-15 in order to correspond with and facilitate mapping with the QoS parameters as specified by 3GPP (see Table 1). Grouping of traffic classes over a range of ARP and THP values is permitted. Best effort services i.e. Interactive & Background classes were the primary focus of the studies in this paper. III. QOS ALGORITHMS

SRNC
Capacity Request

Node B

Capacity Allocation
Figure 1. Flow control algorithm in HSDPA.

The introduction of HSPA in UMTS where significantly higher peak rates and latency are possible has brought about the situation where increasingly the bulk of the data traffic within UMTS systems is delivered via HSPA.

HSDPA was defined by 3GPP such that the scheduler is located in the NodeB, therefore any flow control mechanism over the Iub interface between the RNC and NodeB requires the RNC to signal the NodeB as to the ascertain the capacity status/constraints of that interface. The RNC signals the Capacity Request message to the Node B and the Node B then allocates the capacity per user via the Capacity Allocation response message - see [4]. The next figure illustrates how the algorithm performs. As the radio scheduler in the Node B allocates more traffic to the users with more weight, this is translated to the flow control of the Iub giving more data to transmit over the radio interface to the most priority users. 2) HSUPA Like HSDPA in the downlink, HSUPA (or Enhanced Dedicated Channel (E-DCH)) was defined by 3GPP to provide high bit rates in the uplink in UMTS. The HSUPA scheduler also located in the NodeB decides on when and with which bit rate each every UE is permitted to transmit to the NodeB in that cell. Each received MAC-e PDU (Protocol Data Unit) is placed in a frame protocol data frame and sent to the SRNC (Serving Radio Network Controller) - in some cases several PDUs are bundled into the same data frame. For each data frame, the Node B inserts the following information in the corresponding frame header: A reference time, that gives an indication on when the frame was sent. A sequence number that gives an indication on which frame this is in relation to other data frames.

A. Radio Scheduler and Flow Control 1) HSDPA One of the main characteristics of HSDPA is the usage of a shared downlink channel amongst several users. Access to this shared channel is controlled by the HSDPA scheduler - located in the Node B and based on QoS demands, radio channel quality, and data request; the scheduler selects the UE and assigns transmission resources accordingly. Whilst there are various schedulers e.g. maximum SIR, round-robin, proportional fair and other variants which take into account other factors like delay constraints. All of them aim to perform a trade-off between the maximum cell throughput, application quality and user fairness. Within all schedulers queuing of data packets is performed and 3GPP [3] defines a Scheduling Priority Indication (SPI) to allocate priorities within the scheduler. Within each of these SPI allocations a weight factor provides relative priority between the different users i.e. services in use. These packets are classified prior to onwards transmission via what is called a Weighted Queuing Factor. The SPI values are obtained in a similar way to the RRP parameters given above in Section 2. For example, the most used scheduler mechanism today is the proportional fair, which is defined with the next formula.

M (k ) =

R(k ) (k )

(1)

At the reception of the data frames the SRNC can do the following: With the use of the reference time, the SRNC can compare the relative reception time with the relative transmission time (the reference time included in the data frame). With that information the SRNC can detect if there is a delay build-up in the transmission path. A delay build-up is an indication on that frames are being queued due to overload in the transport network. With the use of the sequence number, the SRNC can detect a frame loss. A frame loss is an indication that packets have been lost in the transport network due to overload reasons.

M(k) is the priority of the user k. R(k) is the average instantaneous rate (k) is the average data rate for user k. With the QoS differentiation, there is a weighting factor for every user depending on the priority.

M (k ) =

R(k ) SPI _ Weight ( SPI = k ) (k )

(2)

In this way, it is possible to utilise the weighting factors and thus manage the throughput allocated to every user.

In the Figure 2. it is shown the procedure used by the SRNC to signal that a transport network congestion situation on Iub/Iur has been detected. This is described in detail in [4].

In case of traffic management at Layer 3, the IETF standardisation body defines DiffServ (Differentiated Services) to provide quality of service and service differentiation within IP networks. DiffServ offers hop-by-hop (PHB Per Hop Behaviour) differentiated treatment of the packets based on the information contained in every packet, thus avoiding per-flow specific state and signalling at every hop. Similarly to the Layer 2 mechanism outlined above, the mapping between the input parameters and the DiffServ code is operator configurable.
C. Call Admission Control algorithms Whereupon a user is admitted in the network i.e. granted service, it is important to allocate the user a priority corresponding to the constraints of the service which it requires. With respect to PS services, this usually means the RNC reserves the necessary bandwidth for the service requested. If no resources are available, admission is not permitted i.e. there could be a reject, unless a pre-emption is triggered i.e. dropping another user with less priority. 1) Bandwidth reservation algorithm Apart from the services with a guaranteed bit rate (GBR) already allocated and therefore are given high priority, the remaining PS traffic does not need such a guarantee and are described as best effort services.

Node B

SRNC

TNL CONGESTION INDICATION

Figure 2. Flow control algorithm in HSUPA.

B. Traffic separation at transport layer The Iub interface was initially defined to use ATM as the transport mechanism and later IP was introduced. In case of (transport) network congestion lost or delayed packets will result. Where no indication is given, a congested network will impact upon all PS traffic and consequently both ATM and IP were defined to include some traffic management handling. 1) ATM case Where ATM transport is employed traffic handling is performed either via the ATM protocol itself or via another related protocol - the ATM Adaptation Layer (AAL2) - to separate the traffic.

If AAL2 is used in this manner, prioritisation and weighting is permitted and can be used in conjunction with the scheduler to permit flow control. In this way, it is possible to have consistent behaviour in all parts of the network. If ATM is used in this manner various (Operator configurable) classes of service are available: CBR, rtVBR, nrtVBR, UBR or UBR+.
2) IP case Where IP Transport is employed, 2 possibilities of traffic management exist: differentiation at IP Layer 3, or at Layer 2.

But even in this case, it is necessary to reserve some amount of bandwidth to ensure that the number of users entering in the system still exceeds the resources available. This bandwidth reservation depends upon the priority of the user/application and therefore mapping of Input parameters (services requested) to a BW reservation is performed. This BW reservation can be done in different parts of the 3G network: Codes of the OVSF code tree, Iub Transport Resources, (NodeB) power in the cell reserved, baseband processing, i.e. hardware reservation in the RNC and the Node B.
2) Pre-emption possibilities When a new call is received, if the required resources are not available then the call will be rejected. However, if the given priority of the user is higher than some of the already admitted calls, then a pre-emption algorithm may be employed to ensure the higher priority user is admitted.

In case of traffic management at Layer 2, three priority bits were defined by IEEE (802.1p) for traffic differentiation in the VLANs. In this case, every packet of the RLC/MAC of UMTS is marked in the Ethernet layer by the RNC/Node B to be prioritised in the transport network. In the live network the transport equipment managing Ethernet will prioritise the flows according to the IEEE standard and the current state of the art.
Priority Level 0 (lowest) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (highest) Traffic Type Best Effort Background Standard (Spare) Excellent Load Controlled Load (Streaming Multimedia) Video [Less than 100ms latency and jitter] Voice Traffic [Less than 10ms latency and jitter] Reserved Traffic [Lowest latency and jitter]

The pre-emption capabilities are based in the ARP parameter as defined in the 3GPP standard (see [2]).
Priority level Pre-emption Capability Pre-emption Vulnerability Queuing Allowed spare (0), highest (1), .., lowest (14), no priority (15) shall not trigger pre-emption, may trigger pre-emption not pre-emptable, pre-emptable queuing not allowed, queuing allowed

Table 4: ARP definition in 3GPP If the Radio Access Bearer (RAB) has a pre-emption capability of may trigger pre-emption, then correspondingly the algorithm may be initiated depending upon Operator preference. The system checks for another RAB with less

Table 3: Priority level of 802.1p

priority and also where the Pre-emption Vulnerability is set to pre-emptable. In the case that there is no less priority RAB to make the pre-emption, it is also permitted that the RAB be put in a queue i.e. waiting for resources to be released in order to proceed. In this case it is necessary to signal Queuing Allowed contained within the ARP Parameter within the RAB description.

(Bronze users got less than 500 Kbps and for Silver users it varied between 500 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps.)
4500 4000 3500 3000 100 90 80 70 60 50 2000 1500 1000 40 30 20 10 0 7:00:00 9:00:00 11:00:00 13:00:00 15:00:00 17:00:00 19:00:00 %

kbps

2500

IV.

LIVE NETWORK RESULTS

500 0 5:00:00

In this section the assessment in a real network (Vodafone Spain real 3G network with more than 6 million 3G terminals) of QoS algorithms is presented. About one thousand Friendly Users were sourced around Madrid and Malaga being real customers of the operator (The Trial lasted for 4 weeks where QoS Differentiation was and was not applied. 32% of the Friendly Users downloaded more than 1GB). 3 kind of friendly users were defined: Gold users with very high priority, Silver users with normal priority and Bronze Users with low priority.
A. Throughput results: Where QoS Differentiation was applied an improvement occurred on average user throughput for Gold and Silver (27% and 10% respectively), at the expense of the Bronze class users ( -28%), see Figure 3.

VS.HSDPA.MeanGoldenBeChThroughput VS.HSDPA.MeanCopperBeChThroughput % Iub Utilisation

VS.HSDPA.MeanSilverBeChThroughput % HSDPA Codes Used

Figure 4.

Throughput per type of user during one day.

B. Delay results: QoS Load differentiation provides high priority users with a better relative performance also in terms of Delay and not just in throughput an important improvement for delay sensitive interactive applications such as HTTP, Mail, Gaming, etc.
10 Time for web page to download (sec) 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
2,4

These statistics were obtained by averaging the 4 maximums Busy Hour in each week during the trial where the friendly users were located. The performance differentiation refers to the period where congestion occurred, at all other times i.e. non-congestion periods, all QoS profiles get all bandwidth required without limitation.
30 20 10 % 0 26.67% 9.94%

9,3 5,7 3,4

2,4 2,4

Gold

Silver w/o Load

Bronze

Figure 5. Impact of QoS activation on web browsing (seconds to dowload)

anticipating surveys results

-27.50%

-10 -20 -30 Gold Silver

The exercise attempted to verify a smart management of the queues in all the congested interfaces such that packets from high priority users are placed in the higher priority queue, resulting in better responsiveness of the system, and correspondingly for Silver and Bronze users. In the Figure 5. , the time to download a typical web page (approx 221KB) during a period of congestion can be seen to similar to the same exercise when the network was not in a congested state Gold users. For Silver and in particular for Bronze the congestion is more apparent. Measurements were done in the most loaded Node B in the trial scenario during instants of full occupancy in Iub, with a constant size web page of 221 KB.

Bronze

Figure 3. Average Throughput variation per kind of user .

Extracting the network statistics for one day within the trial period - Figure 4. below - the throughput distribution of a congested cell was obtained. During the period of 1200 > 1900 it can be seen that the bulk of the traffic comes from the Gold users (yellow line) and it can also be seen that during this period maximum capacity of the Iub is reached: approximately 4.3 Mbps at application layer with 3 E1 for the Gold users

V.

ANAYLIS OF OPTIMUM PROPORTION OF HIGH CLASS

USERS IN THE NETWORK

With M/Pareto mean E[A(t)] and variance Var[A(t)] HSPA Traffic can be modelled and contention studied.
B. Contention in HSPA network As described previously, M/Pareto depends on four parameters,

If all users in a cell are defined with the highest priority then no such user differentiation is then possible and is lost. Therefore, the proportion of users that are allocated to Gold, Silver and Bronze categories respectively is required to be studied in order to obtain this optimum high class user proportion in the network, and also over a range of traffic/load conditions. To do this, a model of the HSPA traffic is performed see below.
A. HSPA Traffic Model Taking into account the notion of self-similarity that takes place in HSPA networks, due to the high variability of burstiness of the multiservice traffic, the chosen model for modelling HSPA traffic is M/Pareto [5] and [6].

- ,: characterize the period that represents the length of the burst (Pareto distribution). - : characterize the arrival burst process (Poisson distribution). - r: mean data-rate during a burst. Characterizing these four parameters for HSDPA traffic an Application Data Traffic tool was used across the Iu interface within the Vodafone Spain network during the period of June08 and only for HSPA connections. First, the distribution of the typically observed burst size on the HSPA network was collected. Utilising this data, we assign the shape () and location () parameters in order to obtain the minimum burst duration and mean burst duration values from the data traffic collected (with an estimated mean data-rate r of 600Kbps).Pareto- distributed bursts are generated using the formula below:
X =

The M/Pareto model is basically a Poisson process with rate of Pareto-distributed overlapping bursts [7]. Each burst, from the time of its arrival, will continue for a random period. During that random period, the data rate during a burst is constant. Giving r to be its rate, the period that represents the length of the burst has a Pareto distribution. The probability that a Pareto-distributed random variable X exceeds threshold x is
x , x Pr{X > x} = 1 , otherwise

(8)

(3)

where X is the burst duration, 1 < < 2 is the shape parameter and > 0 is called the location parameter (minimum x value, minimum burst duration). The mean of X is E[ X ] = , var(X ) = (4) 1 and its variance is infinite. Thus, the mean number of bytes within one burst, BS , is BS = r (5) 1 the mean amount of Traffic arriving within an interval of length t, A (t), in the M/Pareto traffic model is
E[A(t)] = ( t r )

where U is a random variable drawn from the uniform distribution on the unit interval (0;1). Figure 6. shows the real HSPA network burst size distribution and the Pareto burst size distribution characterized for the HSPA traffic with the previous parameters. Both distributions are similar such that the length of the bursts of the HSPA real network aligns with the Pareto-distribution.
80% 70% % on HSPA Network 60% 50% 40% 30% 21% 20% 10% 0% 1KB 10KB 100K 13% 7% 7% 4% 0,05% 1MB and more 75% 72%

Pareto Distribution Real NW Distribution

(6)

and the variance of the traffic arriving in an interval of length t for this M/Pareto model is
2 2 1 t , 0t 2r t 1 2 1 Var [A(t) ] = 1 1 2 r 2 3 1 + (1 )(2 )(3 ) 3 2 2 1 1 1 t + 2 + (1 )(2 ) 2 1 t 3 , t > (1 )(2 )(3 )

Burst size

(7)

Figure 6. Burst size distribution in HSPA network.

controls the regularity with which new sessions commence (the bursts arrivals per second) i.e. the mean cell rate. As increases the traffic in the cell will also increase (see Figure 7. ). Increasing may be considered to represent either

an increase in the level of activity of individual sources, or an increase in the number of sources contributing to a stream [8].
Mean Cell Rate (Gbytes/h)
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 100 500 1000 1500 2000 2500

6,7 5,4 4,0 2,7 1,3 0,3

materialize if their relative proportion is high enough to bring about Gold to Gold contention prevalent i.e. too many Gold users will bring the situation where they themselves become competitors to each other for resources. Calculating the optimum proportion of Gold, Silver and Bronze users in the HSPA network requires the identification of when competition between Gold users occurs i.e. when being a Gold user is no longer advantageous. For a given traffic and proportion of Gold users (%Gold), the probability of two or more Gold Users in contention is
p (Gold Gold Contention ) =
nc = 2

Burst Arrival Rate (: bursts/s)

( n C ) p ( n g 2, n c ,% Gold )

Figure 7. Mean Cell Rate versus Burst Arrival Rate (bursts/s) .

Having obtained the M/Pareto parameters, time of Users in contention can be studied. Taking into account M/Pareto is given in terms of cumulative distribution function (CDF), - probability of no contention pNC (probability of no having traffic or only one user transmitting with data rate r): p NC = 1 F ( A(t ) = r , , ); (9) - probability of contention pc(nc) (probability of having nc users transmitting at the same time with data rate r each one): p C (n c ) = F ( A(t ) = r (nc 1), , ) F ( A(t ) = r n c , , ) (10) for n c 2

(11) where pc(nc) is calculated from the M/Pareto Traffic Model as seen in the previous section, and probability of having two or more gold users is
p (n g 2, n c ,%Gold ) = 1
n g =1 n g =0

p(n

, n c ,%Gold )

(12)

where
nc n n n p(n g , n c ,%Gold ) = (%Gold ) g (1 %Gold ) c g n g

(13)

with nc as the number of users in contention and ng number of Gold Users. Figure 9. shows the probability of having Gold-Gold contention for different Cell load (Mean Cell Rate per hour). A number of M/Pareto models were analysed i.e. varying the cell load by increasing the level of multiplexing (represented by the burst arrival rate ). In the figure below, the blue line is the probability when the proportion of Gold users is 10% and the red one for a proportion of 30%.
70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 0 1.000 2.000 3.000 4.000 5.000 6.000 Mbyte / hour per cell
10% Gold Users 30% Gold Users

5% 2% 16%

3%

4% 21%

1% 0,1%
No contention 2 Users 3 Users 4 Users 5 Users and more

74%

74%

Figure 8. Percentage of time of Users in contention in HSPA network . a) M/Pareto Model, b) Real network.

Figure 8. shows probability of having nc users in contention pc(nc) with a given traffic. Figure 8. a) shows the contention in the M/Pareto Traffic Model and Figure 8. b) in the real HSPA Traffic collected. It can be seen that the contention in both graphs is very similar, thus it can be concluded that HSPA traffic modelling and its contention has been performed consistently.
C. Contention between High Class users The concept of QoS Load differentiation is based on an intelligent allocation of resources in congested conditions depending on User Class. However the premium for high class users (called in this paper as Gold users) wont fully

% Time of Gold - Gold Contention

Max. sustainable Gold - Gold contention rate

Typical work area

Figure 9. Time of Gold Gold contention for different Cell load.

Results show that maximum Gold population must be proportionately below ~10% for this premium service not to deteriorate beyond 25% on a typically loaded network (between 500kbyte/hour and 4Gbyte/hour). If the proportion of Gold users reaches 30%, Gold to Gold contention will happen more than 50% of time on a loaded network thereby negating the premium service. VI. NEW ALGORITHMS TO IMPROVE QOS BEHAVIOUR PROPOSED IN THIS PAPER

Where SPI_Weight_Userj is the priority weight for the user j, and the denominator is the calculation of the total Weights of all the users, and
MaxBW =CurrentUsedBW MarginDecreasedBW

(15)

where CurrentUsedBW is the Iub occupation level at which the congestion has been detected and MarginDecreasedBW is a configurable parameter to reduce the maximum BW used in case of congestion.
B. HSDPA scheduler: QoS differentiation based on delay The algorithm used in the current HSDPA networks is the weighted proportional fair. In this algorithm the scheduling priority of a user is calculated with the equation (2). The problem of the current schedulers is that they do not take into account the delay of the arriving packets for subsequent prioritisation. There are some applications e.g. online gaming that require fast interaction, very low RTT whilst other applications e.g. FTP that do not place such reactive demands upon the system. Proposed new algorithms that take into account the delay (like for example the proposed in [9]), are difficult and complex to implement in an efficient way in the current Hardware platforms. The new proposal here modifies the SPI_Weight to take into account the delay of the packets at the scheduler fully configurable by the operator but done in a simple way to have the control of the scheduler behaviour and being easy to implement.

Iub performance in congestion situations particularly with reference to high priority users can be improved with the introduction of new QoS algorithms. Delay sensitive applications (e.g gaming) require fast interaction. Users differentiation providing high priority ones with better performance in terms of delay.
A. Iub congestion Prioritization As resource visibility between the Radio Network Layer (RNL) and the Transport Network Layer (TNL) is not always possible, this leads to difficulties in applying QoS techniques i.e. whilst the scheduler in the NodeB is able to allocate different priorities, that same NodeB manages normally 3 cells with each cell using a different radio scheduler but all transported over the same shared Iub. Given that the differentiation is done per cell, there will be no fair QoS differentiation between users of different cells.

For example: there are 3 users in a cell, with high, medium and low priorities. In that cell, the scheduler will give more priority to the high priority user than the remaining medium and low priority user. Under the same radio conditions, the high priority user will have more throughput than the rest in that cell. But, if there arrives a new user (low priority) in another cell of the same Node B, the scheduler will give it the maximum possible bit rate as it is the only user in that cell which is more than the high priority user of the other cell thereby again negating the value of being a high priority user. To solve this problem, it is proposed that a new algorithm which introduces QoS differentiation parameters and algorithms into the Flow Control procedure as a unique entity in the Node B managing all the users regardless of which cell that user is in and the resources available to that cell. In case of congestion in the Iub, the Capacity Allocation procedure can be used to manage the bit rate of the users. When the congestion situation has been detected, it is possible to include the same Weighting factor as applied in the scheduler in order to give the same QoS differentiation behaviour in case of radio or Iub congestion. In the capacity allocation message, every user has a number of credits calculated by the Node B. The credits of each user j, CreditsUserj, are calculated according to the following formula:
CreditsUser j =

So, we define the SPI_Weight as: SPI_Weight = SPI_Weight0[i] if packetsDelay < T0[i] SPI_Weight1[i] if T0[i] < packetsDelay < T1[i] SPI_Weight2[i] if T1[i] < packetsDelay

(16)

The different SPI_Weight are integer values to define the relative priority between users. The Tj[i] are defined in ms. i has 16 values as defined in the standards for the 16 possible SPI values. In the next figure, it can be seen a simple example with 3 different priority users.
BRONCE 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 -10 0 SILVER GOLD

SPI _ WeightK Number _ UsersK

K

SPI _ Weight _ User j

MaxBW

SPI weight

10

15

20

25

30

35

delay (ms)

(14)

Figure 10. Example of parameter of SPI_weight.

In this way, it can be defined the initial weight of a user when there is no delay (so when the packets arrive to the scheduler), and then the delay after T0 ms. This T0 ms serves to control what is the minimum acceptable delay for these kind of packets. T1 parameter is useful to define a maximum delay acceptable from which the priority is very high to be able to send the packet as soon as possible. Note that it would be possible to assign priority 0 to a very low priority service until the packets have been in the queue during some ms, thereby freeing up resources to the most important services of the network. VII. CONCLUSIONS This paper presents the results of a QoS Load Differentiation trial performed in a real network environment with up to a thousand customers using a mix of real life mobile broadband applications. Technical analysis shows a significant improvement on average throughput for Gold and Silver users during instants of contention (27% and 10% respectively) at the cost of a decrease for Bronze class users (-28% decrease). A significant reduction in latency was also obtained for Gold customers when under contention, in the range of ~32..44% with respect to QoS differentiation not applied. This may be a very significant improvement for the customer when using delay sensitive applications. In addition, sensitivity of attained differentiation to the customer class mix was analyzed, and a practical recommendation concluded as for the proportion of Gold users to be kept below ~10% in order to preserve the premium service within given limits. Finally, two enhanced algorithms where presented, aiming to better guarantee QoS Load differentiation in scenarios of congested Iub and to further reduce high priority users delay. The foundations for the further improvement are based on main following principles:

- Intercell prioritization on top of current intracell mechanisms. - Bit rate decrease according to user priority when congestion occurs. - Bit rate increase according to user priority when congestion relieves. - Configurable priority weight based on delay requirements and user priority. In summary, under the current trend for Broadband applications to go mobile and the consequent HSPA traffic growth, use of advanced QoS Load differentiation mechanisms in the mobile Networks becomes a significant opportunity for better and innovative customer propositions. This paper presents significant positive results of one of the first application of such mechanisms together with some practical conclusions as well as proposal for further improvements.

REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] 3GPP TS 23.107 v5.13.0,: " QoS Concept and Architecture ". 3GPP TS 25.413: "UTRAN Iu interface RANAP signalling". 3GPP TS 25.433: " UTRAN Iub interface Node B Application Part (NBAP) signalling ". [4] 3GPP TS 25.427: " UTRAN Iur/Iub interface user plane protocol for DCH data streams [5] W. E. Leland, M. S. Taqqu, W. Willinger, and D. V.Wilson. On the Self-Similar Nature of Ethernet Traffic (Extended Version). IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1994, pp 115. [6] V. Paxson and S. Floyd, Wide area traffic: The failure of Poisson modeling, IEEE/ACM TNET 3, 3, 226-244, June 1995 [7] R.G. Addie, M. Zukerman, T.D. Neame, Broadband traffic modeling: simple solutions to hard problems, IEEE Communications Magazine 36 (8) (1998).[6]R.G. Addie, M. Zuckerman, and T.D. Neame, Modeling superposition of many sources generating self similar traffic, Proc. ICC'99, Vancouver, Canada, 387-391, June 1999 [8] R.G. Addie, M. Zuckerman, and T.D. Neame, Modeling superposition of many sources generating self similar traffic, Proc. ICC'99, Vancouver, Canada, 387-391, June 1999 Providing quality of service over a shared wireless link. Andrews, M.; Kumaran, K.; Ramanan, K.; Stolyar, A.; Whiting, P.; Vijayakumar, R. Communications Magazine, IEEE Volume 39, Issue 2, Feb 2001 Page(s):150 154 Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/35.90064