Analytic Hierarchy Process for Qos Evaluation of Mobile Data Networks

The widespread demand for data applications over mobile networks requires that service providers guarantee a well-defined quality of service (QoS) for subscribers. Evaluating the QoS provided by service providers within a geographical area to determine which network provides the best QoS is a challenging task. The complex nature of mobile networks with multi-criteria and conflicting factors makes good decision making difficult. This paper presents a measurement-based method called Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for evaluating QoS in application-specific and user-centric data on 3G mobile networks. The evaluation problem is formulated as a multi-criteria decision problem. Latency, jitter, data loss, and throughput are the parameters collected as criteria in drive testing over the mobile network. Decision matrix is applied to solve the problem by reaching a final ranking of the network based on the collected measured values of the problem parameters. A case study of 3G mobile networks in Uyo metropolis is used to show how this approach can be effective in ranking the QoS in data applications to determine which network provides the best QoS based on users’ perception of quality. The implemented results in Java indicate that Etisalat network is the alternative that offers the best QoS for web browsing application based on measured criteria. This is followed by Airtel and then MTN, while Glo is ranked least. The result provides useful information to decision makers for performance improvement on service quality.