4 High Level Requirements

23.1073GPPQuality of Service (QoS) concept and architectureRelease 17TS

4.1 End User QoS Requirements

Generally, end users care only the issues that are visible to them. The involvement of the user leads to the following conclusions. From the end-user point of view:

– only the QoS perceived by end-user matter;

– the number of user defined/controlled attributes has to be as small as possible;

– derivation/definition of QoS attributes from the application requirements has to be simple;

– QoS attributes shall be able to support all applications that are used, a certain number of applications have the characteristic of asymmetric nature between two directions, uplink/downlink;

– QoS definitions have to be future proof;

– QoS has to be provided end-to-end.

4.2 General Requirements for QoS

– QoS attributes (or mapping of them) should not be restricted to one or few external QoS control mechanisms but the QoS concept should be capable of providing different levels of QoS by using UMTS specific control mechanisms (not related to QoS mechanisms in the external networks).

– All attributes have to have unambiguous meaning.

– QoS mechanism have to allow efficient use of radio capacity.

– Allow independent evolution of Core and Access networks.

– Allow evolution of UMTS network, (i.e., eliminate or minimise the impact of evolution of transport technologies in the wireline world).

– All attribute combinations have to have unambiguous meaning.

4.3 Technical Requirements for QoS

This clause presents the general high-level technical requirements for the UMTS QoS. QoS will be defined with a set of attributes. These attributes should meet the following criteria:

– UMTS QoS control mechanisms shall provide QoS attribute control on a peer to peer basis between UE and 3G gateway node;

– the UMTS QoS mechanisms shall provide a mapping between application requirements and UMTS services;

– the UMTS QoS control mechanisms shall be able to efficiently interwork with current QoS schemes. Further, the QoS concept should be capable of providing different levels of QoS by using UMTS specific control mechanisms (not related to QoS mechanisms in the external networks);

– a session based approach needs to be adopted for all packet mode communication within the 3G serving node with which UMTS QoS approach shall be intimately linked, essential features are multiple QoS streams per address;

– the UMTS shall provide a finite set of QoS definitions;

– the overhead and additional complexity caused by the QoS scheme should be kept reasonably low, as well as the amount of state information transmitted and stored in the network;

– QoS shall support efficient resource utilisation;

– the QoS attributes are needed to support asymmetric bearers;

– applications (or special software in UE or 3G gateway node) should be able to indicate QoS values for their data transmissions;

– QoS behaviour should be dynamic , i.e., it shall be possible to modify QoS attributes during an active session;

– number of attributes should be kept reasonably low (increasing number of attributes, increase system complexity);

– user QoS requirements shall be satisfied by the system, including when change of SGSN within the Core Network occurs.