Perceptual Impacts of Wireless Network Impairments on Video Streaming QoE using Taguchi Approach

Abstract

Video streaming applications have grown tremendously in recent years due to the technological advancement of wireless networks and smart devices. Unlike voice content, videos possess strict network performance demands to deliver a quality view. The Quality of Experience (QoE) refers to the level of users’ satisfaction with the delivered service and is one of the important aspects of managing wireless networks. Normally, wireless networks inherently exhibit various impairments such as packet loss, delay, and jitter. Therefore, understanding QoE on services delivered through the wireless networks is a basic requirement for the quality management process. Hence, this study adopts the Taguchi design of experiments to investigate the simultaneous impacts of network impairments on video streaming QoE. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory using a wireless network testbed. Different network conditions were emulated and real people assessed their impacts on videos streamed using smart devices. This study found that delay and jitter significantly affected video streaming QoE at $\mathrm{p}\lt 0.05$. Moreover, the effects of packet loss were not significant but exhibited outstanding interaction effects with jitter on video streaming QoE, which must be considered for effective network management practices.