The impact of mobile device factors on QoE for multi-party video conferencing via WebRTC

Multi-party video conferencing has gained wide popularity, with numerous applications in both formal and informal contexts. With video conferencing being a highly interactive and resource-intensive service, challenges arise in identifying and quantifying the impact of various factors influencing end user Quality of Experience (QoE). In this paper we study QoE for mobile video conferencing, and focus on the impact of different smartphone configurations (differing in CPU, display size, and resolution) on quality ratings. We conduct subjective studies involving interactive three-party audiovisual conversations based on WebRTC technology in a natural environment over a Wi-Fi network with symmetric and asymmetric device conditions. Results clearly show the impact of different device factors on user QoE, and imply minimum smartphone requirements for three-party video conferencing as being a 2.5 GHz processor and 2GB RAM. In addition, we explore user-preferred functionalities available on the conferencing web page which improve overall user perceived quality.