A QoE Model for Mulsemedia TV in a Smart Home Environment

The provision to the users of realistic media contents is one of the main goals of future media services. The sense of reality perceived by the user can be enhanced by adding various sensorial effects to the conventional audio-visual content, through the stimulation of the five senses stimulation (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste), the so-called multi-sensorial media (mulsemedia). To deliver the additional effects within a smart home (SH) environment, custom devices (e.g., air conditioning, lights) providing opportune smart features, are preferred to ad-hoc devices, often deployed in a specific context such as for example in gaming consoles. In the present study, a prototype for a mulsemedia TV application, implemented in a real smart home scenario, allowed the authors to assess the user's Quality of Experience (QoE) through test measurement campaign. The impact of specific sensory effects (i.e., light, airflow, vibration) on the user experience regarding the enhancement of sense of reality, annoyance, and intensity of the effects was investigated through subjective assessment. The need for multi sensorial QoE models is an important challenge for future research in this field, considering the time and cost of subjective quality assessments. Therefore, based on the subjective assessment results, this paper instantiates and validates a parametric QoE model for multi-sensorial TV in a SH scenario which indicates the relationship between the quality of audiovisual contents and user-perceived QoE for sensory effects applications

Coping with the Challenges of Delivering Multiple Sensorial Media

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MulseOnto: a Reference Ontology to Support the Design of Mulsemedia Systems

Designing a mulsemedia|multiple sensorial media|system entails first and foremost comprehending what it is beyond the ordinary understanding that it engages users in digital multisensory experiences that stimulate other senses in addition to sight and hearing, such as smell, touch, and taste. A myriad of programs that comprise a software system, several output devices to deliver sensory effects, computer media, among others, dwell deep in the realm of mulsemedia systems, making it a complex task for newcomers to get acquainted with their concepts and terms. Although there have been many technological advances in this field, especially for multisensory devices, there is a shortage of work that tries to establish common ground in terms of formal and explicit representation of what mulsemedia systems encompass. This might be useful to avoid the design of feeble mulsemedia systems that can be barely reused owing to misconception. In this paper, we extend our previous work by proposing to establish a common conceptualization about mulsemedia systems through a domain reference ontology named MulseOnto to aid the design of them. We applied ontology verification and validation techniques to evaluate it, including assessment by humans and a data-driven approach whereby the outcome is three successful instantiations of MulseOnto for distinct cases, making evident its ability to accommodate heterogeneous mulsemedia scenarios

New cross-domain QoE guarantee method based on isomorphism flow

This paper investigates the issue of Quality of Experience(QoE)for multimedia services over heterogeneous networks. Anew concept of “Isomor-phism Flow”(iFlow) was introduced for analyzing multimedia traffics, which is inspired by the abstract algebrabased on experimental research. By using iF-low, the multimedia traffics with similar QoErequirements for differentusersare aggregated. AQoE evaluation method was also proposed for the aggregated traffics. Then a new cross-domain QoE guarantee method based on the iFlow QoEis proposed in this paper to adjust the network resource fromthe perspec-tive of user perception.The proposed scheme is validated through simulations. Simulationresults show that the proposed scheme achieves an enhancement in QoE performanceandoutperforms the existing schemes

6G—Enabling the New Smart City: A Survey

Smart cities and 6G are technological areas that have the potential to transform the way we live and work in the years to come. Until this transformation comes into place, there is the need, underlined by research and market studies, for a critical reassessment of the entire wireless communication sector for smart cities, which should include the IoT infrastructure, economic factors that could improve their adoption rate, and strategies that enable smart city operations. Therefore, from a technical point of view, a series of stringent issues, such as interoperability, data privacy, security, the digital divide, and implementation issues have to be addressed. Notably, to concentrate the scrutiny on smart cities and the forthcoming influence of 6G, the groundwork laid by the current 5G, with its multifaceted role and inherent limitations within the domain of smart cities, is embraced as a foundational standpoint. This examination culminates in a panoramic exposition, extending beyond the mere delineation of the 6G standard toward the unveiling of the extensive gamut of potential applications that this emergent standard promises to introduce to the smart cities arena. This paper provides an update on the SC ecosystem around the novel paradigm of 6G, aggregating a series of enabling technologies accompanied by the descriptions of their roles and specific employment schemes

QoE Assessment for IoT-Based Multi Sensorial Media Broadcasting

One of the goals of next generation TV broadcast services is to provide realistic media contents to the users. The user's sense of reality can be reinforced by adding to conventional media multiple sensorial effects, through five-sense stimulus (i.e., taste, sight, touch, smell, and hearing). In a smart TV broadcasting context, especially in a home environment, to deliver the additional effects, customary devices (e.g., air conditioning, lights, etc.), provided of opportune smart features, have to be preferred to ad-hoc devices, often deployed in other applications as for example in gaming systems. In this context, a key issue is the interconnection among the smart TV and the customary devices that deliver the additional sensorial effects to the user. In smart home use cases, the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has been widely adopted to connect smart devices and this paper presents an IoT-based architecture for multi sensorial media delivery to TV users in a home entertainment scenario. In such a framework, home customary devices, act as smart objects interconnected via IoT network to the smart TV and play a role to implement additional effects to the conventional broadcast TV service. In this paper, the requirements in terms of synchronization between media and devices is analyzed and the architecture of the system is defined accordingly. Furthermore, a prototype is implemented in a real smart home scenario with real customary devices, which allowed a subjective test measurement campaign to assess the quality of experience of the users and the feasibility of the proposed multi sensorial media TV service