A novel monitoring architecture for media services adaptation based on network QoS to perceived QoS mapping

One of the future visions of multimedia networking is the provision of multimedia content at a variety of quality and price levels. Of the many approaches to this issue, one of the most predominant techniques is the concept of Perceived Quality of Service (PQoS), which extends the traditional engineering-based QoS concept to the perceptual satisfaction that the user receives from the reception of multimedia content. In this context, PQoS monitoring is becoming crucial to media service providers (SPs) for providing not only quantified PQoS-based services, but also service assurance based on multimedia content adaptation across heterogeneous networks. This work proposes a novel cross-layer monitoring architecture that utilizes a new Network QoS (NQoS) to PQoS mapping framework at the application level. The resulting QoS monitoring should allow the content delivery system to take sophisticated actions for real time media content adaptation, and aims to provide perceived service performance verification with respect to the QoS guarantees that have been specified in contractual agreements between providers and end-users. A subsequent performance evaluation of the proposed model conducted using a real test-bed environment demonstrates both the accuracy and feasibility of the network level measurements, the NQoS to PQoS mapping and the overall feasibility of the proposed end-to-end monitoring solution. This work is partially funded by European Commission (ENTHRONE EU project IST 507637). See . The authors would like to thank ENTHRONE EU project partners for their inputs and valuable discussions.