A Design of Experiment (DOE) Analysis of the Performance of Uplink Real-Time Traffic over a 3G Network

The bandwidth and reliability of the reverse link (or uplink) as the performance metrics of real-time traffic are studied in this paper. A two-level full factorial design of experiment (DOE) was conducted to identify the impact on the bandwidth and reliability of four factors: packet size, data streaming rate, time of the day, and buffer size in a real network environment. Two extreme cases for each factor were tested and statistical analysis is performed to characterize how different factors and their interactions may affect the bandwidth and reliability. The importance of this study is illustrated in the optimal channel selection mechanism where appropriate packet size, data streaming rate and buffer size can be chosen to achieve the best result.