Definition of QoE Fairness in Shared Systems

Abstract

Abstract-User-centric service and application management focuses on the Quality of Experience (QoE) as perceived by the end user. Thereby, the goal is to maximize QoE while ensuring fairness among users, e.g., for resource allocation and scheduling in shared systems. Although the literature suggests to consider consequently QoE fairness, there is currently no accepted definition of QoE fairness. The contribution of this paper is the definition of a generic QoE fairness index F which has desirable key properties as well as the rationale behind it. By using examples and a measurement study involving multiple users downloading web content over a bottleneck link, we differentiate the proposed index from QoS fairness and the widely used Jain's fairness index. Based on results, we argue that neither QoS fairness nor Jain's fairness index meet all of the desirable QoE-relevant properties which are met by F . Consequently, the proposed index F may be used to compare QoE fairness across systems and applications, thus serving as a benchmark for QoE management mechanisms and system optimization.

No silver bullet: QoE metrics, QoE fairness, and user diversity in the context of QoE management

“…index F x , as shown in Figure 6. Thereby, F = 1 means a perfectly fair system, while F = 0 describes the unfairest system [12]. Clearly, optimal fairness is achieved for p=0.5, where both users get the same quality -independent of the used QoE metric.…”

“…Such methods often rely on Jain's fairness index [11] or coefficient of variation to evaluate systems in terms of QoE fairness. A general QoE fairness index F has been defined by Hoßfeld et al [12], which fulfills some desirable properties that are violated by Jain's index or coefficient of variation. For example, F is independent of the underlying QoE rating scale which is used to derive a mapping between QoS and QoE.…”

“…QoE fairness over k users [12] The QoE management decision aims at obtaining the optimal resource allocation x o over the k users which maximises the average QoE and QoE fairness in Q x , i.e., the QoE metric A for resource allocation x over the k users. See Figure 2 for an illustration.…”

Enhancing scalability of peer-to-peer energy markets using adaptive segmentation method

“…The higher values of SI show higher satisfaction of player. Fairness of players satisfaction is evaluated using QoE of players [24]. This factor is calculated using satisfaction of all players in the segment and shows fairness from users' perspective.…”

Quality of experience and access network traffic management of HTTP adaptive video streaming

“…The goals of QoE-aware tra c management are to e ciently utilize the available network resources and to improve the QoE of end users, which typically includes to establish QoE fairness [242] between di erent applications and users. Reference [200] surveyed various approaches to QoE-aware tra c management approaches in wireless networks, whereas [201] only focused on mechanisms for improving the QoE of video streaming.…”