Abstract
Nowadays wireless network operators need to manage and control their resources while maintaining user satisfaction and fidelity. Not only the quality of service (QoS) needs to be accounted for but also the user quality of experience (QoE). We propose a model for the mapping between a set of QoS parameters and the QoE for multimedia communications. The aim of this research is to provide the network and servisse providers with the means to assess the contribution of the network performance to the overall level of user’s satisfaction. This mechanism will allow for building an effective QoE control mechanism onto measurable QoS parameters. On the one hand, Mean Opinion Score (MoS) experiments have been considered for gaming and video applications. On the other, since MoS results are scarce and have not been available for web-browsing and audio applications, the model considers the ITU-T G.1030 and G.107 recommendations. Although we have considered these recommendations to characterize the impact of the service level parameters on QoE, they are themselves base upon experimental MoS measurements. Mathematical fitting has been used to obtain the pioneering unified model that maps the QoS onto QoE by means of regression analysis, validated by analysing the coefficient of determination, R2, between the results from our model and the available experimental values (or the ones from the ITU-T G.107, for audio). The achieved results are R2 = 0.94 for gaming, 0.84 for video and 0.98 for audio. The corresponding mean square error is approximately zero.
Authors: Daniel Robalo and Fernando J. Velez