QoE assessment of VoIP in next generation networks

Abstract

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are currently present in our personal and professional activities and will be key services in Next Generation Networks (NGN). Hence, in order to keep and attract new customers, the quality of delivery for VoIP services needs to be measured and optimized to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) support to users in future multimedia networking systems. This paper presents the requirements to assess the quality level of VoIP services in NGN and analyzes the limitations of the well-known E-Model and Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (PESQ) metrics for quality evaluation of VoIP services. Additionally, a new QoE metric, named Advanced Model for Perceptual Evaluation of Speech Quality (AdmPESQ), is proposed to overcome the limitations of current proposals concerning packet loss and packet delay awareness and to improve the VoIP assessment process. Performance evaluation was carried out based on simulation experiments to show the benefits of AdmPESQ in assessing the impact of VoIP services on the user's expectation. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.