An approach to the performance and efficiency power analysis on embedded devices using Asterisk

Abstract

Voice over IP (VoIP) communication will dominate the computing world for years to come. In order to perform VoIP communication, it is necessary to encode and decode the voice. This process consumes the main computational resources, as an example, it is possible to mention the processor and memory. The telecommunication industries provide equipment with high purchasing prices, which makes the access to this technology still very restricted. Embedded devices are purposely constructed for certain applications, they execute systems with high criticality complexity. Asterisk is a free software for voice over IP communication and its main function is to implement the functions of a telephone exchange. These technologies promise to reduce costs and maximize results. This work describes a performance analysis on three modern embedded devices (Raspberry Pi 3, Orange Pi Plus 2 and Banana Pi M3) using the Asterisk voice over IP communication system. The performance analysis consists of evaluating the jitter, delay and bandwidth, as well as the number of concurrent calls supported in each device with SIP and IAX2 protocols with CODEC’s G.711a, G.711u, Gsm, Speex, Ilbc, G.722 and in parallel, monitor the RAM memory consumption, processing and energy. The results show that the Raspberry Pi 3 and the Banana Pi M3 devices support in a satisfactory manner a high number of simultaneous calls with moderate memory, processing and energy consumption. However, the Orange Pi Plus 2 device showed high processing consumption.