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Network chattiness drives new mobile network designs

By – / 3:37 PM
3 Comments

Are you thinking that the biggest bandwidth hog for 4G Mobile Internet is video? Think again.

My take is that the disruption started by iPhone and the whole application development ecosystem (iOS, Android) is redefining the mobile Internet experience.

Now, service providers face challenges from the increased use of applications. In addition, the application development ecosystem has created a new challenge for mobile network service providers.  Some people call it chattiness.

Mobile application chattiness defined
Today’s new mobile applications talk repeatedly to the server, dramatically increasing the volume of signaling traffic. To support these applications, mobile connections must be “always-on.” Plus, they must achieve that without reducing mobile station battery life and optimal usage of radio resources.

New techniques such as fast dormancy introduced in 3GPP Rel8 also increase the volume of mobile signaling. And to complicate matters, different mobile platforms (running Android, iOS or Windows Mobile) behave differently when it comes to connecting and maintaining a connection to the wireless network. Some platforms activate bearer on power-on and some activate/deactivate the bearer based on application triggers.

The upshot is that mobile service providers now have to engineer their networks not only for data performance but also for signaling performance.

MME to the rescue
Fortunately the LTE and evolved packet core (EPC) mobile networks that operators are deploying have new mechanisms built in to help address network chattiness. LTE/EPC separates the control plane and data plane, unlike with previous generations of wireless technology. They use separate interfaces and network elements for each type of traffic.

In earlier generations of wireless technology, numerous network devices played a role in signaling and in the control plane. But LTE minimizes the number of network elements that are part of the control plane. In the LTE/EPC network, Mobile Management Entity (MME) is the control plane brain. Service providers can implement it on a separate device from the data plane gateway. It has interfaces to the core and radio access networks, enabling it to efficiently manage the repeated activation, modification and deactivation of bearers. MME functions include end user authentication and access, roaming support, load balancing, mobility management and others.

New design challenges
The introduction of MME into the network adds new engineering considerations, however. These involve the interaction of MME with the radio network and packet core gateways. It’s critical for service providers to understand and address these new considerations in order to maximizing the value of MME and minimize the impact of network chattiness.
Subjects: Network Intelligence, LTE, Emerging Technology, Mobile Packet Core, Mobile
Comments:
There's no doubt that signaling volume has increased with LTE. But even so, video traffic is already the largest consumer of network capacity in the Internet, and still growing fast. Cisco estimates that 90% of all traffic will be video by 2014, and I don't see why not. It seems to me that this will force even more changes to LTE, making the name itself an anachronism. We can help them by engineering further evolution towards reduced signaling etc.
Charles E. Perkins — March 18, 2011 11:56 AM
Reducing signalling load always has trade off. If signalling load has to be reduced between NEs involved in order to optimize the bandwidth utilization then NEs have to be more intelligent. Making any NE more intelligent causes the software to be more complex thus increase in run time and more power consumption by NE . for example signalling by ICSCF in IMS netwrok can be omitted but it causes SCSCF to be more complex. which of these two approaches is more "greener" and cost effective is the topic to be closely looked at.
bharat — April 22, 2011 3:43 AM
As you mentioned MME is the brain of the LTE network. Similarly SCSCF is the brain of IMS network. So i can suggest a business logic. Any brain can achieve many states such as fully conscious, subconscious or semi conscious etc. Similarly MME/SCSCF shall be able to sense the amount of traffic and achieve the state accordingly . There can be different ways of doing so based on patterns and statistics. This way MME/SCSCF can function in power save mode (hibernate) and reduce the power consumptions. How this can be technically realized still remain the challenge :)
bharat — April 22, 2011 4:00 AM