Quality of user experience analysis

• US 9,538,409 B2
• Filed: 02/18/2014
• Issued: 01/03/2017
• 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-Jen
• Application Number:
  US14/183,300
• Publication Number:
  US 20140160941A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,050 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• 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 trace file from a device engaged in wireless communication, the trace file including at least first data associated with a radio layer of a communication protocol stack of the device, second data associated with an Internet layer of the communication protocol stack of the device, third data associated with a network layer of the communication protocol stack of the device, and fourth data associated with a transport layer of the communication protocol stack of the device;

correlating the first data with at least one of the second data, the third data, or the fourth data based on a payload of a packet, the packet represented by the first data and the at least one of the second data, the third data, or the fourth data;

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

based on the analyzing, determining one or more performance metrics associated with key performance indicators for the device based at least in part on the first data and the at least one of the second data, the third data, or the fourth 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 the 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 key performance indicators include key performance indicators for the one of the Internet layer, the network layer, or the transport layer.

5. The method of claim 4, 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.

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

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

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

8. 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.

9. 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 trace file from a device engaged in wireless packet-based communication, the trace file including first data for a first layer of a communication protocol stack of the device and second data for a second layer of the communication protocol stack;

correlating 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).

10. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 9, 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.

11. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 9, 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.

12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 9, wherein the operations further comprise correlating trace files of multiple devices engaged in or relaying the wireless packet-based communication.

13. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 12, wherein the operations further comprise performing the analyzing on both the correlated data and based on the correlating the trace files.

14. 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 layer of a multi-layer communication protocol stack of the corresponding device;

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

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

for devices each having of one or more trace files that include data for multiple layers of the multi-layer communication protocol stack of that 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.

15. The system of claim 14, 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.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein the presentation and notification module further enables a user of the system to initiate a test communication of data packets.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the trace file correlation module correlates the data packets horizontally based on trace identifiers associated with trace entries from the trace files.

18. The system of claim 14, 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.

19. The system of claim 14, wherein the communicated data packets are received at a user device from a remote service or remote website.