TIA/EIA-136-440

While trying to get a better understanding of VoLTE and IMS , I came across bearers stuff
which I thought might be useful to share with you guys. Before we talk about what default
and dedicated bearer is, let's understand what bearer itself is :
Bearer is just a virtual concept. It defines how the UE data is treated when it travels across
the network. Network might treat some data in a special way and treat others normally.
Some flow of data might be provided guaranteed bit rate while other may face low
transfer. In short, bearer is a set of network parameter that defines data specific
treatment e.g. Person A will always get at least 256 Kbps download speed on his LTE
phone while for person B there is no guaranteed bit rate and might face extremely bad
download speed at times
Now let me talk briefly about Dedicated and Default bearer one by one.

1.1.1
Default Bearer in LTE
When LTE UE attaches to the network for the first time, it will be assigned
default bearer which remains as long as UE is attached. Default bearer is
best effort service. Each default bearer comes with an IP address. UE can
have additional default bearers as well. Each default bearer will have a
separate IP address. QCI 5 to 9 (Non- GBR) can be assigned to default
bearer.

1.1.2 Dedicated Bearer

To put it simple, dedicated bearers provides dedicated tunnel to one or more
specific traffic (i.e. VoIP, video etc). Dedicated bearer acts as an additional

TIA/EIA-136-440

bearer on top of default bearer. It does not require separate IP address due
to the fact that only additional default bearer needs an IP address and
therefore dedicated bearer is always linked to one of the default bearer
established previously. Dedicated bearer can be GBR or non-GBR (whereas
default bearer can only be non-GBR). For services like VoLTE we need to
provide better user experience and this is where Dedicated bearer would
come handy. Dedicated bearer uses Traffic flow templates (TFT) to give
special treatment to specific services

1.1.3 Example
Usually LTE networks with VoLTE implementations has two default and one
dedicated
bearer
Default bearer 1: Used for signaling messages (sip signaling) related to IMS
network.
It
uses
qci
5
Dedicated bearer: Used for VoLTE VoIP traffic. It uses qci 1 and is linked to
default
bearer
1
Default bearer 2: Used for all other smartphone traffic (video, chat, email,
browser
etc)
Why dont we use dedicated bearer for ims signaling as well ?
IMS network is separate network from normal internet. And it comes with its
own APN. Therefore we need separate default bearer for IMS network. This
also helps in separating IMS traffic from normal internet traffic as well
How it is decided to send voip traffic (for example) on dedicated bearer?
Both UE and eNB has TFT which has rules for certain services. For example,
incase of VoLTE voip traffic, the rule are defined on the basis of protocol
number
,
destination
network
ip
network
etc

TIA/EIA-136-440

How
is
dedicated
bearer
linked
to
default
bearer?
The value of "Linked EPS bearer identity" defined in setup info of dedicated
bearer is used to link dedicated bearer to default bearer