research-article

Performance Characterization and Call Reliability Diagnosis Support for Voice over LTE

Authors:

Yunhan Jack Jia,

Qi Alfred Chen,

Zhuoqing Morley Mao,

Kranthi Sontinei,

Kevin LauAuthors Info & Claims

MobiCom '15: Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

Pages 452 - 463

https://doi.org/10.1145/2789168.2790095

Published: 07 September 2015 Publication History

Abstract

To understand VoLTE performance in a commercial deployment, in this paper we conduct the first comprehensive performance characterization of commercially deployed VoLTE, and compare with legacy call and over-the-top (OTT) VoIP call. We confirm that VoLTE excels in most metrics such as audio quality, but its call reliability still lags behind legacy call for all the three major U.S. operators. We propose an on-device VoLTE problem detection tool, which can capture new types of problems concerning audio quality with high accuracy and minimum overhead, and perform stress testing on VoLTE call's reliability. We discover 3 instances of problems in the early deployment of VoLTE lying in the protocol design and implementation. Although the identified problems are all concerned with the immature LTE coverage in the current deployment, we find that they can cause serious impairment on user experience and are urgent to be solved in the developing stage. For example, one such instance can lead to up to 50-second-long muting problem during a VoLTE call! We perform in-depth cross-layer analysis and find that the causes are rooted in the lack of coordination among protocols designed for different purposes, and invalid assumptions made by protocols used in existing infrastructure when integrated with VoLTE. We summarize learnt lessons and suggest solutions.

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Index Terms

Performance Characterization and Call Reliability Diagnosis Support for Voice over LTE
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
2. Networks
  1. Network types
    1. Mobile networks
    2. Wireless access networks

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cover image ACM Conferences

MobiCom '15: Proceedings of the 21st Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

September 2015

638 pages

ISBN:9781450336192

DOI:10.1145/2789168

General Chairs:
Serge Fdida
UPMC/LIP6, France
,
Giovanni Pau
UPMC/LIP6, France
,
Program Chairs:
Sneha Kumar Kasera
University of Utah, USA
,
Heather Zheng
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGMOBILE: ACM Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data and Computing

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 07 September 2015

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MobiCom'15

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SIGMOBILE

MobiCom'15: The 21th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking

September 7 - 11, 2015

Paris, France

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MobiCom '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 38 of 207 submissions, 18%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 440 of 2,972 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

Fang ZYang GLyu WHong ZZhong SZuo WYang YWang GZhang D(2024)Improving Network Robustness via Cellular Infrastructure Sharing: An Empirical Study of Infrastructure Failure with All Cellular Operators in a CityProceedings of the 32nd ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems10.1145/3678717.3691307(617-620)Online publication date: 29-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678717.3691307
Alimpertis EMarkopoulou AButts CBakopoulou EPsounis K(2024)A Unified Prediction Framework for Signal Maps: Not All Measurements are Created EqualIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2022.322177323:1(70-89)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TMC.2022.3221773
Shi JXie TTu GPeng CLi CHou AWang SHu YLei XChen MXiao LLiu X(2023)When Good Turns Evil: Encrypted 5G/4G Voice Calls Can Leak Your Identities2023 IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288900(1-9)Online publication date: 2-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/CNS59707.2023.10288900
Li YPeng CZhang ZTan ZDeng HZhao JLi QGuo YLing KDing BLi HLu S(2021)ExperienceProceedings of the 27th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking10.1145/3447993.3448138(28-41)Online publication date: 25-Oct-2021
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Qin ZCao FYang YWang SLiu YTan CZhang D(2020)CellPredProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/33809824:1(1-24)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2020
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Aprillia OSaragih YLammada IS AWijaya ANhu Van N(2020)RF 4G Network Performance Result Based on Android Drive Test Collection Tools Automatically Extracted by Yaiao Application at the Universitas Singaperbangsa Karawang Case Study2020 3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Electronics, Computer, and Industrial Technology (MECnIT)10.1109/MECnIT48290.2020.9166673(291-295)Online publication date: Jun-2020
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Lonkar SReddy K(2020)Analysis of audio and video quality of voice over LTE (VoLTE) callInternational Journal of Information Technology10.1007/s41870-020-00455-314:4(1981-1994)Online publication date: 25-Apr-2020
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Bae SSon MSon SKim YWolman AZhong L(2019)Hidden FiguresProceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems and Applications10.1145/3301293.3302352(75-80)Online publication date: 22-Feb-2019
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Kim HLee JLee EKim Y(2019)Touching the Untouchables: Dynamic Security Analysis of the LTE Control Plane2019 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (SP)10.1109/SP.2019.00038(1153-1168)Online publication date: May-2019
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