Empirical evaluation of VoIP aggregation over a fixed WiMAX testbed

Abstract

The WiMAX Reference Network Architecture can be used in point-to-point and point-to-multipoint network topologies, and is suitable for providing last-mile, building-to-building, and residential broadband connectivity. Another major application, and the main focus of this study, is the use of fixed WiMAX as backhaul for voice and data services. We evaluate voice over IP (VoIP) performance over a fixed WiMAX testbed and quantify the benefits from employing application-and network-level aggregation. We examine such aggregation schemes using our fixed WiMAX testbed and report the results for both uplink and downlink. If we use objective mean opinion scores (MOS) as the main gauge of overall performance, application-layer aggregation appears to be the best scheme, allowing our fixed WiMAX testbed to sustain nearly three times more flows in the downlink and over two times more flows in the uplink than when no aggregation is used, at comparable MOS values.