Characterization of User-Perceived Quality of Service (QOS) in Mobile Devices Using Network Pairwise Comparisons

Abstract

This paper presents a user-centric and application-specific QoS assessment methodology for cellular communication networks. Specifically, it uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluate QoS as a multi-criteria decision problem that represents how well cellular networks' data services are perceived given particular sets of application classes and relative to other networks servicing in the same area. As part of the methodology, drive testing is performed to collect objective measurements associated with identified QoS criteria for data services. Once drive testing is performed and data collected, multiple networks are compared to determine the network that provides higher QoS based on users' perception of quality. The selection of the best performing network is based on the output provided by the AHP approach, which is used as unified measurement of the perceived QoS by users on different networks. In order to determine application-specific priorities, the approach presented uses three different application classes, including Emergency, Business, and Personal. For each class, the relative importance of each quality evaluation criteria is adjusted in the AHP procedure to reflect the priorities of the services expected. Through several case studies, the approach is proven successful in providing a way for analyzing user-centric QoS for application-specific scenarios.