Economics of logarithmic Quality-of-Experience in communication networks

Abstract

Utility functions, describing the value of a good or a resource from an end user's point of view, are widely used as an important ingredient for all sorts of microeconomic models. In the context of resource allocation in communication networks, a logarithmic form of utility usually serves as the standard example due to its simplicity and mathematical tractability, with the additional nice property that the corresponding social welfare maximization enforces proportional fairness of allocated band-widths. In this paper we argue that recent results from Quality of Experience (QoE) research indeed provide additional justification for such a choice, and discuss several examples. Especially for Voice-over-IP and mobile broadband scenarios, there is in-creasing evidence that user experience follows logarithmic laws similar to the Weber-Fechner Law which is well-known from the area of psychophysics. Eventually, this logarithmic behavior will allow inferring a rather close linkage between subjective user experience, overall social welfare and general fairness issues.