Quality of user experience analysis

• US 10,349,297 B2
• Filed: 08/12/2016
• Issued: 07/09/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Original Assignee: T-Mobile USA, Inc. (Deutsche Telekom AG)
• Inventors: Hui, Jie, McPherson, Zachary William, Sontineni, Kranthi, Myron, Peter P., Bagley, Himesh, Smith, Jeffery A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Liu, Jung
• Application Number:
  US15/235,987
• Publication Number:
  US 20160352599A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,061 Days
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/045 for graphical visualisation of monitoring data
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/08 Monitoring or testing based on specific metrics, e.g. QoS, energy consumption or environmental parameters
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/08 Testing, supervising or monitoring using real traffic
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 24/10 Scheduling measurement reports ; Arrangements for measurement reports
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 76/27 Transitions between radio resource control [RRC] states

Abstract

The techniques described herein involve analysis of communication data included in trace file(s) of device(s) involved in a communication. These trace file(s) may each include data associated with multiple layers of a communication protocol stack of a respective device or data associated with a single such layer. The techniques may further involve one or more of determination of performance metrics associated with data at a specific layer of a specific device, correlation of the data between layers of a device, or correlation of data across multiple device(s) involved in the communication. The performance metrics or correlated data may then be analyzed based on thresholds or models to determine whether the performance metrics or correlated data exhibits a degraded quality of user experience. Also or instead, graphic or textual representations of the performance metrics or correlated data may be generated.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

receiving a first trace file from a first node, the first node comprising a device engaged in wireless communication with a mobile telecommunication network, the first trace file including data associated with a radio layer of a communication protocol stack of the device;

receiving a second trace file from a second node associated with the mobile telecommunication network, the second trace file comprising other data for a different layer than the radio layer of the communication protocol stack;

correlating the data with the other data based on a payload of a packet, the packet represented by the data and the other data;

determining one or more performance metrics associated with key performance indicators for the device based at least in part on the data and the other data; and

generating one or more graphic or textual representations of the one or more performance metrics.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the key performance indicators include radio layer key performance indicators, which include at least one of radio link control (RLC) retransmissions, packet loss, network signaling, radio resource control (RRC) state duration, radio state transition times, times spent in different radio states, number of radio state transitions, or reconfiguration response times.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first trace file or the second trace file is associated with a data collection and diagnostic logging tool for measuring radio frequency performance.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the different layer is one of an Internet layer, a network layer, or a transport layer of the communication protocol stack of the device.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the key performance indicators include key performance indicators for the one of the Internet layer, the network layer, or the transport layer based at least in part on the data associated with the one of the Internet layer, the network layer, or the transport layer.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the key performance indicators for the Internet layer, the network layer, or the transport layer include at least one of domain name service (DNS) round trip times (RTT), transmission control protocol (TCP) RTT, hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) RTT, TCP retransmissions, TCP duplicate acknowledgements, TCP resets, TCP failures, delta frames, or sequence numbers.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the graphic or textual representations include at least one of a graph, a chart, or a log representation.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

analyzing the data and the other data based on one or more of performance thresholds or performance models; and

based on the analyzing, determining that the wireless communication exhibits a reduced quality of user experience (QoE).

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the device is one of a user device, a telecommunications base station, a wireless access point, a radio network controller, or a core telecommunications network element.

10. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

receiving a first trace file from a device engaged in wireless packet-based communication with a mobile telecommunication network, the first trace file including first data for a first layer of a communication protocol stack of the device;

receiving a second trace file including second data for a second layer of the communication protocol stack, the second data being from a different layer than the first layer of the communication protocol stack;

correlating, as correlated data, the first data with the second data based on a payload of a packet, the packet represented by the first data and the second data;

analyzing the correlated data based on one or more of communication performance thresholds or communication performance models; and

based on the analyzing, determining that the wireless packet-based communication exhibits a reduced quality of user experience (QoE).

11. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise:

generating a graphic or textual representation of the correlated data;

or

providing an alert when the wireless packet-based communication exhibits a reduced QoE.

12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the correlating based on the payload of the packet comprises correlating a representation of the payload in the first data with a representation of the payload in the second data.

13. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 10, wherein the operations further comprise correlating trace files of multiple devices engaged in or relaying the wireless packet-based communication.

14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 13, wherein the operations further comprise performing the analyzing on both the correlated data and based on the correlating the trace files.

15. A system comprising:

a processor;

a trace file receiving module configured to be operated by the processor to receive;

at least one trace file from each of a plurality of devices involved in communicating data packets, each trace file including data that is for the data packets and is associated with at least one different layer of a multi-layer communication protocol stack of a corresponding device;

a trace file correlation module configured to be operated by the processor to;

correlate, as correlated data packets, the data packets horizontally across the trace files for the plurality of devices, and

for a device each having two or more trace files that include data for multiple layers of the multi-layer communication protocol stack of the device, correlate the data packets vertically between the layers; and

a cross file analysis module configured to be operated by the processor to analyze the correlated data packets to identify one or more of the plurality of devices causing a problem that degrades a QoE associated with communicating the data packets.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising a presentation and notification module to:

generate a graphic or textual representation of the correlated data packets;

or

providing an alert when a problem that degrades the QoE associated with communicating the data packets is identified.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the presentation and notification module further enables a user of the system to initiate a test communication of data packets.

18. The system of claim 15, wherein the trace file correlation module correlates the data packets horizontally based on trace identifiers associated with trace entries from the trace files.

19. The system of claim 15, wherein multiple trace files are collected from at least one node, each of the multiple trace files being associated with a layer of a communication protocol stack of the at least one node.

20. The system of claim 15, wherein the communicated data packets are received at a user device from a remote service or remote website.