Impact of acknowledgments on application performance in 4G LTE networks

4G LTE, the new cellular network standard, provides the capacity to support Quality of Service (QoS) for wireless multimedia applications. Recent developments have modified the LTE QoS setup with MAC layer schedulers and changed its current architecture. However, research has yet to examine the effects of the various LTE retransmission choices on QoS. This paper examines the impact of using acknowledgments and timer adjustments to recover lost data over LTE on VoIP and FTP applications. NS-3 simulations show that LTE retransmissions improve FTP throughput, while the benefit to VoIP applications varies with wireless loss rate.