Logging real packet reception patterns for end-to-end quality of experience assessment in wireless multimedia transmission

While a fairly large number of databases exist that provide impaired video sequences designed for the development and evaluation of Quality of Experience (QoE) approaches, the impairments due to transmission errors resulting in packet loss in these databases are based on simulation of small number of scenarios and not representative of real transmission scenarios that arise in end-to-end transmission of multimedia to mobile devices. This paper proposes a solution to this problem in the form of a framework for recording real packet drops as they occur in different situations of wireless multimedia transmission to mobile devices. The logs can be used to generate realistic impairments, as well as design new highly-efficient quality assessment approaches based on monitoring network performance in real time. An Android-based mobile device is used to receive streamed H.264 videos and real Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) packet reception sequences (traces) are recorded. To evaluate the approach and the impact of different transmission scenarios on perceived quality, a study of the quality experienced by the users in 3 different real wireless transmission scenarios was conducted and the results are presented in the paper, showing that they diverge significantly from the packet-loss sequences usually considered in quality of experience studies.