Quality of Experience (QoE) - Current standardization activities

The assessment of the Quality of Experience (QoE) has become more important in audiovisual quality assessment and MOBILE3DTV has started to evaluate user experience for mobile 3D television and video. Within standardization bodies the topic of Quality of Experience has been included into standardization activities. The goal of ETSI HF STF 354 (Specialist Task Force 354 within the Human Factors Group of ETSI) is to provide requirement guidelines for real-time multimedia services aiming at providing a good QoE. Goal is to provide objective and subjective measures of user experience for given communication situations, service prescriptions and levels of QoS [1]. The guidelines as the expression of measure are available in ETSI EG 202 534 [2] and ETSI TR 102 535 [3].

Within the International Telecommunication Union ITU standardization activities towards QoE are targeted in ITU-T SG12, the lead study group on quality of service and quality of experience within the ITU. Goal of ITU-T SG12 to be able to a) measure quality parameters in next generation networks and b) measure their impact on QoE. The challenge of providing good QoE for new multimedia systems is study item of question Q13/12 “QoE, QoS and performance requirements and assessment methods for multimedia including IPTV”. Main study items are the relation of end-user requirements to system parameters and to identify simple and efficient analysis techniques to measure and monitor QoE. All results will be included into the development of new recommendations.

References:

1. Brooks, P., Hestnes, B., Heiestad, S., Aaby, C. (2006). “Communicating Quality of Experience data for the development of multimedia services”. Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium on Human Factors in Telecommunication, Sophia Antipolis, France, March 21-23 2006, (available from http://www.hft.org/HFT06/HFT_06_programme.htm).
2. ETSI EG 202 534: "Human Factors (HF): Guidelines for real-time person-to-person communication services". ETSI Guide, 2007
   
3. ETSI TR 102 535: "Human Factors (HF): Guidelines for real-time person-to-person communication services; future requirements". ETSI Technical Report, 2007