Evaluation of header compression schemes for IP-based wireless access systems

For mobile IP-based telephony (voice over IP) and IP-based real-time multimedia over cellular radio systems, an economically viable solution is needed. It is an absolute requirement that, for example, the 60-octet IPv6/UPD/RTP headers on IP telephony packets be reduced in size to conserve bandwidth in the radio spectrum. We evaluate the performance of two header compression schemes, based on RFCs 2508 and 3095, under the conditions of cellular radio access technology. The results presented in this article refer to voice and Web browsing traffic and are based on the implementation of compression/decompression algorithms for the aforementioned standards. We find that RFC 3095 performs significantly better if used for mobile communications.