Packet dropping with intra-flow prioritization for Internet video calls in mobile networks

Mobile data traffic has witnessed tremendous growth over the last few years. A key application driving that growth is Over-The-Top (OTT) applications. Yet very little is known about the OTT traffic characteristics. In this paper, we focus on delay-sensitive real-time Internet video call applications such as Skype. We propose a novel intra-flow prioritization packet dropping (IPPD) scheme for efficient congestion mitigation of OTT Internet applications in Mobile Broadband Networks, e.g. 3G, LTE, LTE-A, etc. Simulation results show a great increase of video call capacity in a LTE network. The necessary protocol enhancements for LTE networks are also discussed.