A methodology and test environment for QoS measurements in mobile networks

Voice services has been for a very long time the primary source of income for mobile network operators. Even with the increasing importance of the data traffic, voice services will keep playing a key role and will not disappear with the transition to a networking model based on the IP protocol. Moreover, the key industry players diagnosed years ago that mobile subscribers wouldn't accept a significant degradation in the quality of their voice services. Because of that, it becomes critical to ensure the Quality of Experience (QoE) in the transition to new generation networks based on packet switching communications. The work in the present thesis has aimed to analyze the behavior and the dependencies in the different voice services over IP (VoIP), as well as to identify optimal configurations, potential enhancements and methodologies to ensure acceptable quality levels while minimizing the costs.