On QoE monitoring and E2E service assurance in 4G wireless networks

From the users and service providers point of view, the upcoming 4G wireless (WiMAX and LTE) networks are expected to deliver high performance sensitive applications like live mobile TV, video calling, mobile video services, etc. The 4G networks are intended to provide an accurate service view of customer-perceived service quality - their “Quality of Experience” or QoE. Delivering high QoE depends on factors that contribute to the user’s perception of the target services as well as the Quality of Service (QoS) of the network. Although a better network QoS in many cases will result in better QoE, fulfilling all traffic QoS parameters alone may not guarantee satisfied users. On the other hand, if the QoS of the network degrades, the QoE of users' applications could be affected significantly. This article presents an integrated view of End-to- End (E2E) QoS and service assurance support in WiMAX and LTE networks. The integrated view also considers the existing cross-layer implementations to achieve the necessary E2E QoS and how the QoS and QoE should and can be monitored over the network in an E2E fashion. The existing cross-layer implementations ensure the E2E QoS performance before establishing the applications. However, even though the network has strong QoS support, the service providers should still monitor the QoS of the network and QoE of users’ applications accurately to achieve service quality assurance.