QoS and QoE Aware N-Screen Multicast Service

The paper focuses on ensuring the quality-of-service (QoS) and quality-of-experience (QoE) requirements of users having heterogeneous devices in a multicast session. QoS parameters such as bit rate, delays, and packet losses are good indicators for optimizing network services but fall short in characterizing user perception (QoE). In N-Screen service, the users have different devices with heterogeneous attributes like screen size, resolution, and access network interface, and the users have different QoE on N-Screen devices with the same QoS parameters. We formulate the objective function of the N-Screen multicast grouping to ensure the minimum user’s QoE with smaller bandwidth requirement. We propose a dynamic user reassignment scheme to maintain and satisfy the QoE by adapting the user’s membership to the varying network conditions. The proposed schemes combine the available bandwidth and multimedia visual quality to ensure the QoS and QoE. In the network architecture, we introduce the functions of the QoS and QoE aware multicast group management and the estimation schemes for the QoS and QoE parameters. The simulation results show that the proposed multicast service ensures the network QoS and guarantees the QoE of users in the varying network conditions.