QoE Enhancement of Multimedia Communications by User-Assistance

This paper proposes a method of enhancing QoE (Quality of Experience) in audiovisual IP communications; it is based upon user's assistance through GUI (Graphical User Interface) for QoS (Quality of Service) control. The rationale behind the proposed method is the accommodation of the user's inclination, which is one of the most difficult factors affecting QoE in QoE/QoS control; the accommodation is by adjusting QoS control parameter values through GUI by the user. In order to explain the meaning of the proposal, we first discuss the relation between QoE and QoS; we then point out that traditional QoS control is not capable enough to achieve QoE reflecting individual users' inclinations. We present a simple example of the implementation of the proposed method into an interactive audiovisual communication system and demonstrate that the proposed method improves QoE in terms of a QoE measure (the psychological scale) by subjective experiment.