A Methodology for Quality of Service Evaluation in 4th Generation (4G) Long Term Evolution (LTE) of Cellular Data Networks

The area of study proposed in this dissertation is the evaluation of the Quality of Service (QoS) provided by a Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular data network. It focuses on the evaluation of data services such as web browsing, FTP, ping, and video streaming. It is aimed to address the gap between the technical capabilities as they are advertised by the service providers and the QoS experienced by the user. Additionally, changes performed on the network to improve its performance from the technical perspective are not very predictable with respect to the implications on the user's perceived QoS.;The analysis is based on the live data that are collected on commercial cellular network and compared against broadband wireless LAN. A methodology for QoS assessment based on a relatively small set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is devised. The measured data are used to verify the proposed methodology.