Quality of service (QoS) mechanism controls the performance, reliability and usability of a telecommunications service. Mobile cellular service providers may offer mobile QoS to customers just as the fixed line PSTN services providers and Internet service providers may offer QoS. QoS mechanisms are always provided for circuit switched services, and are essential for non-elastic services, for example streaming multimedia. It is also essential in networks dominated by such services, which is the case in today's mobile communication networks.
Mobility adds complication to the QoS mechanisms, for several reasons:[1]
Many factors affect the quality of service of a mobile network.[1] It is correct to look at QoS mainly from the customer's point of view, that is, QoS as judged by the user. There are standard metrics of QoS to the user that can be measured to rate the QoS. These metrics are: the coverage, accessibility (includes GoS), and the audio quality.[2] In coverage the strength of the signal is measured using test equipment and this can be used to estimate the size of the cell. Accessibility is about determining the ability of the network to handle successful calls from mobile-to-fixed networks and from mobile-to-mobile networks. The audio quality considers monitoring a successful call for a period of time for the clarity of the communication channel. All these indicators are used by the telecommunications industry to rate the quality of service of a network.
The QoS in industry is also measured from the perspective of an expert (e.g. teletraffic engineer). This involves assessing the network to see if it delivers the quality that the network planner has been required to target. Certain tools and methods (protocol analysers, drive tests and Operation and Maintenance measurements), are used for this QoS measurement:
In general, grade of service (GoS) is measured by looking at traffic carried, traffic offered and calculating the traffic blocked and lost.[1] The proportion of lost calls is the measure of GoS. For cellular circuit groups an acceptable GoS is 0.02. This means that two users of the circuit group out of a hundred will encounter a call refusal during the busy hour at the end of the planning period. The grade of service standard is thus the acceptable level of traffic that the network can lose. GoS is calculated from the Erlang-B formula, as a function of the number of channels required for the offered traffic intensity.
The audio quality of a cellular network depends on, among other factors, the modulation scheme (e.g., FSK, QPSK) in use, matching to the channel characteristics and the processing of the received signal at the receiver using DSPs.[3]