Evaluation and Improvement of QoE and QoS Parameters in Commercial 5G Networks: 5G-TOURS Approach

Abstract

Cellular communication systems have become an urgent part not only of our everyday life, but also play a big role in the process of building a fundamentally new intelligent concept of the digital world. We are currently in the development phase of 5G cellular networks on the way to their transformation to 6G. 5G has become a truly revolutionary technology, able to use all available advantages, technologies and create the digital world of the future. Therefore, 5GPPP within the framework of the Horizon 2020 program was granted funding for a large number of research projects, the purpose of which was to test the proposed innovative solutions, to combine efforts with cellular operators, vendors, etc., in order to test the real capabilities of 5G and demonstrate all the advantages to vertical industries. One of these flagship projects was 5G-TOURS. The 5G-TOURS project was aimed at improving mobility systems in the city, the e-Health industry and the tourism sector. Thus, within the framework of 5G-TOURS project was developed the special methodology for assessment of QoE and QoS and mapping between these parameters. To apply developed evaluation methodology for all the use cases of the project is very difficult, as it needs a lot of additional efforts by the partners, additional testing tools, testing procedures, etc. That is why it was decided to apply the developed approach only to one use cases in which it was possible to collect all the required data. Thus, UC 4 “High quality video service distribution” was under study to ensure the applicability of the developed approach. All the experiments were conducted in Turin, wherein a movable car, specially equipped, collected QoE and QoS data for further analysis. Thus, the methodological approach was confirmed by the results of the conducted experiments. And in the future, similar models can be developed to study the correlations of service quality parameters and user experience for any developed use cases.