A cost-effective and real-time QoE evaluation method for multimedia streaming services

Traditionally, subjective tests are conducted to obtain the Mean Opinion Score (MOS) or Quality of Experience (QoE) of a video streaming service. However, subjective tests are time-consuming and rather costly. Thus, a cost-effective and real-time QoE evaluation method for video streaming services is presented in this paper. The proposed scheme first adopts subjective tests to find the relationships between the QoE and individual QoS parameters. Next, based on subjective test results, the corresponding QoS–QoE mapping functions for individual QoS metrics are derived using the regression approach. Finally, the integrated QoE function, which is a multi-variate function of multiple QoS metrics, for assessing the overall QoE of video streaming services is proposed. Hence, network/service providers only need to measure related objective QoS parameters while the corresponding MOS/QoE can be easily derived in real time based on the integrated QoE function. Since subjective tests only need to be conducted occasionally for updating the parameters in the QoS–QoE mapping functions, the cost of QoE assessment decreases significantly.