Applying WIFI QoS Techniques to UMTS Networks

The last decade we have witnessed an unprecedented development of telecommunication technologies. This is not only due to devices capacity improvement, but also due to network performance amelioration. Moreover, new technologies were proposed such as UMTS (3G), giving users more mobility and therefore more freedom. However, this resulted in a more demanding application, particularly for QoS provisioning. WIFI and UMTS are among these new telecommunication technologies. Although each one has its own QoS techniques, WIFI experiences a lack in QoS provisioning and UMTS should be further improved to guaranty QoS. Our approach is simple. To be improved, each technology can benefit from QoS techniques of the other, of course, if this is possible. In this case, it’s clear that UMTS can take advantage of WIFI QoS techniques, because UMTS uses physically a multitude of channels, using different bit rates and channel managements. While, WIFI uses a single channel with a single channel management, that is random access method. UMTS also uses a random access channel (PRACH channel), therefore we can apply WIFI QoS techniques to UMTS PRACH channel. In this study, we present WIFI and UMTS networks. We will focus on the air interface functioning of both networks to highlight similarities, then we propose two schemes inspired from WIFI QoS techniques to apply to UMTS air interface (Uu interface