A multi-dimensional view of QoE: the ARCU model

Understanding and modeling the wide range of influence factors that impact end user Quality of Experience (QoE) and go beyond traditional Quality of Service (QoS) parameters has become an important issue for service and network providers, in particular for new and emerging services. In this paper we present a generic ARCU (Application-Resource-Context-User) Model which categorizes influence factors into four multi-dimensional spaces. The model further maps points from these spaces to a multi-dimensional QoE space, representing both qualitative and quantitative QoE metrics. We discuss examples of applying the ARCU Model in practice, and identify key challenges.