MPLS-mux: an efficient protocol for providing QoS in IP based wireless networks

The recent interest of turning the circuit-like ATM based radio access network of 3G systems to a pure IP based one has attracted several standards and research bodies. In this paper, we briefly describe the motivation behind pursuing an IP based RAN and then highlight some of the challenges of using it, from a QoS standpoint. We then describe how MPLS could be used to provide guaranteed QoS while maintaining several advantages of using IP transport. We describe a new protocol, MPLS-mux, which offers the inherent QoS advantages of MPLS while offering efficient transport of traffic. Using numerical results, we show that MPLS-mux results in efficient usage of bandwidth and hence making it readily applicable to wireless and other narrow band access networks.