vowlan: call quality
TRANSCRIPT
1
VoWLAN: Call Quality September 2015 Brendan Kearns
2
Eir is former incumbent in Ireland Quad Play Operator, number 1 in fixed and two in mobile IMS in place for Enterprise SIP Trunking & Hosted Office Next is VoWLAN and VoLTE Our aim is to maximise voice quality where we can We are considering implementation VoWLAN QOS in the home network We have tested VoWLAN quality in the Lab and field My own perspective M.ENG Thesis on VoWLAN in 2006 First experimental study on the effectiveness of 802.11e
Context: VoWLAN Eir
2
3
How good can VoWLAN quality be and what degrades it? Describe WLAN contention and its problems Does QOS on WLAN work? experiments in the Lab and the home WLAN QOS design Conclusions
Contents
3
4
Quality can be excellent and best was fullband Opus which samples at 48Khz … which is superior to DECT, OTT services and VoLTE. WLAN introduces delay and jitter when congested Some might say that WLAN is so fast that it will never be congested?? WLAN Headline speeds are impressive but throughput is much less One device transmits at a time And must wait for acknowledgements Wait and backoff times increase exponentially as number devices increases. Radio headers are transmitted at lower speeds than user data, Handsets drop down to lower speeds when channel conditions fall off
What Determines Voice Quality on IP?
4
although the network may be well dimensioned for low latency and packet loss, the end to end quality for the user is contingent
on the traffic level on the wlan...
5
802.11 Operation no QOS And With QOS
WLAN Access is Contention Based
User C is transmitting User C stops transmitting
A & B pause for ‘wait time’…then….
Start random backoff….
User B starts counting at a lower number so gets medium User A freezes counter
And gets medium after B has finished transmission
6
tx
wait
wait
tx
freeze 1 0 tx
2
4
1
3
0
2
time
A
B
C
WLAN Collisions
A & B are waiting for C to finish They choose the same backoff countdown (2) So they transmit at the same time Packets collide and there is no ack, thus collission detected Now backoff counter doubles up Less likely that they choose same random backoff this time User B chooses a smaller countdown so he gets the medium
7
tx
wait
wait
tx tx
2 1 0
2 1 0
tx 7 6 5
2 1 0
wait A
B
C
8
Universal wait and backoff times Means that short voice packets must wait behind long data frames Downstream traffic is penalised Access point is just another station It transmits more than half of the total traffic So downstream voice packets must wait longer IEEE Defined 802.11e to resolve the problems AP reduces the time voice packets wait to transmit It is implemented in all WiFi chip sets It is called WiFi Multimedia extension (WMM)
Problems With WLAN
8
Upstream DELAY
DownStream DELAY
Device
Access Point
Device Device Device
802.11e WLAN QOS Shorter wait and backoff time for voice Access point broadcasts longer wait & backoff times to wireless devices So traffic transmitted by access point is prioritised Radio can be reserved For n slots And Voice quality protected At medium cong No admission control
9
tx
wait
wait
tx
freeze 1 0 tx
2
4
1
3
0
2
time n x 10 micro sec
A
B
C
10
Experiments in the LAB Simulated RTP Flows with background UDP & TCP Load Extremly Accurate Latency, Jitter, Packet Loss Measurement
Upstream Packet Delay During MEDIUM UDP Congestion
Two existing voice calls One prioritised One not Prioritised
UDP stream loads WLAN to 70% In both cases latency increases to 100mS Upstream voice is not impacted at medium congestion
11
Downstream Packet Delay During Medium UDP Congestion
Prioritised voice is protected
Latency is increased to 100mS
Non Prioritised Voice is garbled
Latency goes to 400mS Buffers are filled and packets are dropped
This is because it is transmitted by the AP
And the AP is transmitting most of the traffic on the WLAN
0
50100
150200
250300
350400
450
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
13
TCP has less impact on voice quality than UDP Both prioritised and non prioritised voice calls were little impacted
TCP Unfairness But TCP throughput was reduced A Problem? Upstream TCP ack can be blocked by prioritised upstream voice Solution: Do not implement upstream prioritisation OR engineer the access point QOS parameters
WLAN Loaded up to 80% Utilisation with TCP
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
1 5 9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49
14
WLAN QOS in the Home Inject known audio stream into active call Audio received compared with original Gives accurate quality score UDP, TCP load generated with iPerf or torrent
15
Two floor house with no internal concrete VDSL 50Mbit/s with IPTV Service, 802.11n Access Point
WLAN modulation / signal strength during VoWLAN call below 0 – 300 seconds
Call quality remained good until 30M from AP During 10Mbit/s torrent download reach reduced to 11M from AP During 35Mbit/s download downstream voice was garbled close to AP
VoWiFi Quality Urban House
Voice Quality is Protected in the Home
IMS client running on iPhone Without congestion PESQ is 4.4 When WLAN is loaded then Downstream degraded first PESQ = 1.1
Then Upstream Degraded Congestion begins at 60% WiFi QOS protects voice up 80% utilisation Reach of the WLAN through walls and distance is increased by approximately 10% when prioritised – during light to medium congestion (60-75% Utilisation)
downstream
upstream
17
Two floor house with all concrete walls & floors ADSL 3Mbit/s
WLAN modulation / signal strength during VoWLAN call Downstream Call quality garbled upstairs WLAN repeater required to give full indoor coverage
Implementation of QOS QOS makes little difference as WLAN is never congested
VoWiFi Quality Rural Concrete House
18
Deployment of QOS in The Home
19
Voice can be prioritised on WiFi if three conditions are met (1) Voice packet is DSCP marked In the downstream by the IMS A Problem?
The AP can read layer 2 or layer three markings Eir layer two markings not aligned with 802.11e and cannot be changed Can Home Gateway be configured to ignore layer two .1p markings?
(2) Operating system of the device passes DSCP to the WiFi chipset We found that WMM itself is supported Android & IOS Access points do have configuration screens to turn WMM on / off Some can to alter the change wait times for the four classes
(3) WMM is implemented WiFi chipset All WiFi chipsets implement WMM
Requirements For WMM
19
20
At Network level Voice is prioritised in both directions at layer two Home gateway marks upstream
Voice packets scheduled out of gateway before Internet
Passed through access network in VLAN with Pbit set
VLAN – MPLS – VLAN mapping through access and core
Only downsream WLAN traffic is prioritised SBC sets DSCP for downstream
This leads to Following Solution
HGW 7750
7750 DSCP
Marking In IMS
Layer 2
DSCP
SIP Client
21
Conclusion
22
Turning on WMM at access point provides significant protection for voice traffic against competing wireless data traffic
Turning on WMM at the client makes only a small difference where there are a small number of clients on the wireless LAN. This plus the “TCP Unfairness” problem means that it can be omitted.
All Home gateways support WMM but their firmware may need to be altered to prioritise on DSCP rather than layer two
Conclusion
22
23
Extra Slides
Other measures to improve vowlan call experience
When the user is inside the “rove in” volume client registers The user has IMS calling available inside the “rove out” outside which client de-registers from the IMS.
Before de-register there is a transition volume where voice quality deteriorates, physically 1-3M wide, and where the user is warned through an audible beep that the call is about to drop.
in a low – medium loaded WLAN voice reach is approximately 15% less than data reach. During high load, which induces packet delay, voice reach shrinks faster because of its greater sensitivity to delay. QOS slows this shrinkage,
Rove In Bad
Voice
No Voice
No WLAN