End-to-End QoS Improvement of HSDPA End-User Multi-Flow Traffic Using RAN Buffer Management

High speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) was introduced to UMTS radio access segment to provide higher capacity for new packet switched services. As a result, packet switched sessions with multiple diverse traffic flows such as concurrent voice and data, or video and data being transmitted to the same user are a likely commonplace cellular packet data scenario. In HSDPA, radio access network (RAN) buffer management schemes are essential to support the end-to-end QoS of such sessions. Hence in this paper we present the end-to-end performance study of a proposed RAN buffer management scheme for multi-flow sessions via dynamic system-level HSDPA simulations. The scheme is an enhancement of a time-space priority (TSP) queuing strategy applied to the node B MAC-hs buffer allocated to an end user with concurrent real-time (RT) and non-real-time (NRT) flows during a multi-flow session. The experimental multi- flow scenario is a packet voice call with concurrent TCP-based file download to the same user. Results show that with the proposed enhancements to the TSP-based RAN buffer management, end-to-end QoS performance gains accrue to the NRT flow without compromising RT flow QoS of the same end user session.