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Achieving Maximum Quality Assurance for Video Distribution

6/24/2013 1

Mark Stephenson

About Psytechnics

About Psytechnics
Psytechnics is a BT spin-out (2000) Strong credentials 12+ years research in BT 5 ITU-T world standards
P.862 PESQ P.862.2 Wideband PESQ P.562 Call Clarity Index P.563 [passive voice waveform] J.144 Broadcast video

35+ patents 200,000+ subjective test scores 30+ licensees Now supporting the industrys transition to Customer experience management

Presentation Outline

Industry Landscape Network management today What do we mean by quality? Conventional metrics dont get you there Usefulness of network and end-point instrumentation Early handset deployments Multi-media agents for 3G video services
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The Telecoms Environment

Migration of existing networks to IMS for NGN and 3G Wireless being challenged from fixed and new entrant WLAN operators Innovation required in tariffs, new services and applications -Video and Data Services Fixed mobile convergence / mobile substitution threatened Changing / Uncertain regulatory environment

Wireless Operator Challenges

Top Line - Drive up ARPU per subscriber with innovative and high quality content and services Bottom Line - Drive down OPEX cost migration to IP core in UMTS release 4 Reduce Subscriber Churn Limiting the cost of customer Acquisition (typical churn rates >30%) Customers EXPECT good speech, audio and video quality Customers are more demanding, want more services, with better quality NOW Managing Customer Satisfaction is the key challenge associating the brand with Quality and then delivering this for all service categories
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Observation

Managing voice audio and video quality are critical success factors for wireless carriers

What is Quality?

Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor

1
Bad

Mean Opinion Score (MOS)

5 Excellent 4 Good 3 Fair Poor 2 Bad 1 Customer Customer Experience and Opinion

Customer Experience: Mean Opinion Score

Excellent

Good

Fair

Poor

1
Bad
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Failure of conventional performance metrics - how is service Quality Measured today?

Service management decisions are typically based on technical measurements in the network
e.g. -Mobile: Radio Signal (RxQual, RxLev, BER), Customer Surveys and/or complaints, Network KPIs -IP Telephony: packet loss, jitter & delay used to estimate VoIP network quality
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Beyond Simple Networks statistics

Simple network statistics such as packet loss level will not mirror users perception

1% packet loss (evenly distributed)

1% packet loss (bursty)

1% packet loss (jitter)

3 examples with same content, bit rate, frame rate, codec and level packet loss but different MOS values
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Service Quality Management Today

Subscriber Service Layer

Video

SMS

Voice

MMS
Performance Management Inventory Management

Estimate Service Impact

calculate

Network Assurance Management

Event Streams

Network Layer

BGW Node B BTS

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ATM RNC BSC

IP MSC/VLR SGSN

SDH GGSN HLR

The consequences of this to the Network Operator

Delivery of less than optimum service levels on increasingly complex/mixed mode networks New services commissioning timeline increased dramatically Unnecessary Resource required to firefight 000s of non customer-impacting alarms Miss-targeting of spend on: Infrastructure,Maintenance,Customer Support Quality SLAs are impossible to implement for mixed media services across multi mode networks/devices
Which all contribute and lead to....Customer Dissatisfaction
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Service Quality Management Tomorrow

Subscriber

Psytechnics embedded agent

Service Layer

Video

SMS

Voice

MMS
Performance Management Inventory Management

Estimate Service Impact

calculate

Network Assurance Management

True Customer Experience

Customer Experience Database Server

Event Streams

Network Layer

BGW Node B BTS

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ATM RNC BSC

IP MSC/VLR SGSN

SDH GGSN HLR

Evolution of Video Services

Multicasting

Video telephony: real-time person-to-person video call

Video streaming Video download & play, capture & sharing (video MMS) Still image capture & sharing (MMS)

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Video Quality Measurement?

Delivery of high-quality, mass-market video poses many technical challenges High bit-rate expensive to deliver Poor robustness to packet loss Rapidly-changing technology Quality only just good enough no safety margin Imperative to test, monitor and hence guarantee quality perceived by end-user

Challenges: multiple handsets ,codecs, players and content types

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Video Quality Issues: Streaming

Codecs and players Encoding bit rates and frame rates Server Transmission bit rates (network bandwidth) Device buffering capacity

Streaming Server

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Video Quality Issues - Video Telephony Codecs and players Encoding bit rates Error profile Transmission bit rates (network bandwidth) Latency: end-to-end video delay
Network

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Mobile Video Codecs

File format

File extension

Video codec

Standard/ Proprietary
RealNetworks proprietary codec Microsofts proprietary codec for Smartphones and PC pocket phones

Examples of phones
Nokia 6600, 3650, N-gage, Siemens SX1 Motorola MPx200, Samsung i600 O2 XDAII, Samsung i700, Siemens SX56 All phones must support 3GPP standard

RealMedia

.rv,.rm

RealVideo 8

Windows Media

.wmv

Windows Media Video 8

H.263 MPEG-4 Visual Simple Profile

3GPP

.3gp

International standard

Infrastructure for Mobile Video Services

Devices

Network

Applications

Content

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Intrusive (Active) Objective Quality Measurement

MOS Scores 5
Good

Input signal

Network

Output signal

Excellent

Fair

Poor

n-1
1

1
Bad

x(1)

Measurement tools
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Diagnostic Tools

IP Parametric Video Quality Measurement

Known input/reference video Network/Transmission chain impairments Output/degraded video

Coder

Decoder
Perceptual MOS

Excellent

Good

Live IP traffic

Fair

Poor

1
Bad

Other metrics Perceptual video model

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User experience measured by handset agent

Handset application

Extract Talker Characteristics

Vocal Tract Parameter Extraction

Error Identification

12 3

4 5

1 2 3 6 4 5 6

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Handset agent applications

2G and 3G voice wav eform

3G multi-media

Passive monitor using a population of handsets : - mobile operator enterprise clients - deployment via employed workforce - Complement to existing drive tests - Real time view of network performance 2G and 3G - Voice waveform analysis for voice services 3G - IP-bearer analysis for audio and video, multi-media

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Mobile multi-media

Wireless Access e.g. WiFi or dual mode

Multi-media Monitor Platform Database quality analysis
UMAN

Network Management System

2G/3G

Handset Agent 2G voice waveform 3G voice waveform 3G IP multimedia

External probe or embedded

Content Server

Broadcast Feed

Psytechnics voice monitor Psytechnics video monitor

Customer centric performance overview Handset agents reveal customer usage/experience Network probe for uplink performance and signalling
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Content Assurance

Content

Network monitoring and management views

Customer centric performance overview MOS thresholds and alarms Detailed diagnostics Rapid detection of service affecting faults
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Quality Assurance for Video services

Network Build Phase - Active End to End Testing for Video Streaming and Video Telephony services Network and End User Service Assurance
Monitor service quality by passively monitoring the delivery network Monitor service delivery by passively monitoring by use of mobile handset agent

Content - Optimise encoding parameters for different content types for video streaming services

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Psytechnics Video Quality

Software measurement agents for network build and optimisation applications Modelled on complex, multivendor, multi-operator networks Designed for use across all network technologies and services Quality measurement helps service providers balance quality and cost when launching and managing all video services MOS prediction

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mark.stephenson@psytechnics.com
+447884 310132 www.psytechnics.com
6/24/2013 28

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