Performance Evaluation of IP Based Multimedia Services in UMTS

This paper presents our work in the performance evaluation of UMTS network based on simulation. Enhanced UMTS Radio Access Network Extensions for NS-2 (EURANE) developed by SEACORN has brought us to the higher phase of UMTS simulation in third generation wireless telecommunication system. Wireless 3G is designed to be able to deliver various kind of multimedia package through an IP network for the purpose of easier interconnection with fixed network with various existing multimedia services. Multimedia services with their bandwidth consumption characteristics are able to be sent through a UMTS network with the existence of High Speed Data Packet Access (HSPDA) in Release 5. Quality of Service (QoS) is a major concern in multimedia services. This paper shows the performance analysis of a number of multimedia services and their QoS using HSDPA in UMTS. The experiments were based on EURANE extension for NS-2. From the simulation conducted, we found that Unacknowledged Mode (UM) in Radio Link Control (RLC) will perform better for QoS class number 1 (VoIP) and 2 (Video Streaming), while Acknowledged Mode (AM) mode are more suitable for QoS class number 3 (web server) and 4 (FTP).