Quality of service provision in mobile multimedia - a survey

The prevalence of multimedia applications has drastically increased the amount of multimedia data. With the drop of the hardware cost, more and more mobile devices with higher capacities are now used. The widely deployed wireless LAN and broadband wireless networks provide the ubiquitous network access for multimedia applications. Provision of Quality of Service (QoS) is challenging in mobile ad hoc networks because of the dynamic characteristics of mobile networks and the limited resources of the mobile devices. The wireless network is not reliable due to node mobility, multi-access channel and multi-hop communication. In this paper, we provide a survey of QoS provision in mobile multimedia, addressing the technologies at different network layers and cross-layer design. This paper focuses on the QoS techniques over IEEE 802.11e networks. We also provide some thoughts about the challenges and directions for future research

Quantifying the influence of rebuffering interruptions on the user's quality of experience during mobile video watching

Entertainment and multimedia are the key functionalities in emerging mobile markets. The ability to understand and quantify the quality of experience (QoE, i.e., the users' subjective perception of the "overall acceptability of an application or service"), will play a major role in the success of these mobile services. This study explores the thresholds at which the technical quality of a mobile video service becomes unacceptable for users. A subjective experiment drawing on the logging of technical parameters combined with subjective evaluations by a user panel resulted in a model for quantifying the acceptability of video interruptions. The results of this analysis provide insights into the QoE and (un)acceptability regarding video interruptions for different network conditions and video parameters. The conclusions of this paper can be used as a guideline for service design and network dimensioning