Performance of VoIP on HSDPA

This paper provides packet scheduler design and performance simulations for running VoIP services over high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) in WCDMA. The main challenge of supporting VoIP service on HSDPA is the tight delay requirement combined with the small VoIP packet size. A packet scheduler design incorporating VoIP packet aggregation and user multiplexing is proposed and the VoIP capacity is studied for a macro-cellular environment. Results are obtained for different delay budgets and packet scheduling settings, using either blind round robin or a slightly modified version of proportional fair scheduling. For proportional fair scheduling with code-multiplexing of 4-users, the downlink VoIP cell capacity on HSDPA is found to be in the range 72-104 users depending on whether the delay budget for the node-B scheduling and user reception equals 80 ms or 150 ms, respectively.