Robust header compression for real-time services in cellular networks

The 3G mobile-IP networks currently being developed will support end-to-end enhanced real-time multimedia services. End-to-end IP enables very high flexibility for transmission over a mobile network. Conversational services require the use of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), which is typically deployed on top of UDP/IP, to facilitate acceptable quality of service at the receiver. The main drawback of using RTP/UDP/IP is the relatively large overhead imposed by these headers (at least 40/60 bytes in each packet), which leads to significant spectral inefficiency, particularly for low-bit rate speech applications. This paper examines current header compression techniques, CRTP & ROCCO, for multimedia services over IP and examines their performance in mobile channel environments.