Influence of the Packet Size on the One-Way Delay in 3G Networks

We currently observe a rising interest in mobile broadband, which users expect to perform in a similar way as its fixed counterpart. On the other hand, the capacity allocation process on mobile access links is far less transparent to the user; still, its properties need to be known in order to minimize the impact of the network on application performance. This paper investigates the impact of the packet size on the minimal one-way delay for the uplink in third-generation mobile networks. For interactive and real-time applications such as VoIP, one-way delays are of major importance for user perception; however, they are challenging to measure due to their sensitivity to clock synchronization. Therefore, the paper applies a robust and innovative method to assure the quality of these measurements. Results from measurements from several Swedish mobile operators show that applications can gain significantly in terms of one-way delay from choosing optimal packet sizes. We show that, in certain cases, an increased packet size can improve the one-way delay performance at best by several hundred milliseconds