QoE in video streaming over wireless networks: perspectives and research challenges

The deployment of 3G/LTE networks and advancements in smart mobile devices had led to high demand for multimedia streaming over wireless network. The rapid increasing demand for multimedia content poses challenges for all parties in a multimedia streaming system, namely, content providers, wireless network service providers, and smart device makers. Content providers and mobile network service providers are both striving to improve their streaming services while utilizing advancing technologies. Smart device makers endeavor to improve processing power and displays for better viewing experience. Ultimately, the common goal shared by content providers, network service providers, and smart device manufactures is to improve the QoE for users. QoE is both an objective and a subjective metric measuring the streaming quality experience by end users. It may be measured by streaming bitrate, playback smoothness, video quality metrics like Peak to Signal Noise Ratio, and other user satisfaction factors. There have been efforts made to improve the streaming experiences in all these aspects. In this paper, we conducted a survey on existing literatures on QoE of video streaming to gain a deeper and more complete understanding of QoE quality metrics. The goal is to inspire new research directions in defining better QoE and improving QoE in existing and new streaming services such as adaptive streaming and 3D video streaming.