The effectiveness of transmitting voice traffic over IPv6 convergence sublayer of WiMAX mesh networks

Abstract

Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a new protocol that has been defined to ultimately replace IPv4. IPv6 solves the problem imposed by the limited 32-bit address field in IPv4. However the definition of the new protocol results in longer header size, which affects services that used to be transmitted over IP especially real-time services such as voice. As IP network is no longer confined to the wired domain and is being extended over wireless networks. The IEEE 802.16-based WiMAX (World Wide Interoperability of Microwave Access) promises to be one of the wireless access technologies capable of supporting very high bandwidth applications. In this paper, using the simulation results obtained by NS2, we demonstrate the effectiveness of transmitting voice traffic over IPv6 convergence sublayer of WiMAX mesh network and compare it with the quality in case of applying current header compression techniques, Robust Header Compression (ROHC) and Payload Header Suppression (PHS), and a new proposed modification to the PHS technique. We prove that using our proposed technique we improve the current PHS technique and approach the same performance of ROHC technique.