We know, LTE network meant to have single transport network for all kind

of services like, voice, video, email, gaming and web-browsing.

Here, LTE should have a mechanism to manage their own resources and
meets QoS for each types of services as e.g. consider Voice service, in this it
is allowed some kind of transmission tolerance but very sensitive to latency
and its variance. Also, an email is a service where latency is not considered
but must have “0” error in transmission.

QoS is measured at two levels;

1. QoS over Ethernet/IP network: Over Ethernet/IP network, the basic
principle behind QoS is packet classification and it’s marking. Like, all
equipment chains (Routers, Switches, Firewalls etc.) can decide which
service needs to be dropped and which service have a priority or which
service is last to dropped. This is achieved by marking the
Differentiated Services Code Point (DSCP) field in network layer and
priority bits (P-bits) in Ethernet Layer.

2. QoS over LTE with IPsec: The LTE network adds another level of QoS
by means of QCI. The QoS assigned to a particular service or user by
HSS or PCRF. So these elements should have the ability to map the QCI
to DSCP/P-bit values which directly helps to backhaul (Routers,
Switches, Firewalls etc.) for processing the data properly, managing the
QoS.

In tunnel Mode, IPsec encrypts the original IP header between eNB and
SecGW, making impossible to read DSCP in backhaul. Now the main
question is; how both element eNB and SecGW maintain QoS then, this
can be achieved by both these elements itself (eNB and SecGW). These
elements copy original IP header to IPSec header. By doing this, research
shows that LTE QoS is maintained.

End-to-End QoS in TLE network: