Mobile multimedia communications are facing substantial transmission challenges due to the growing trend of smartphone use. The next generation of mobile communications (5G) will have to focus on what is important for the users – the Quality of End User Experience (QoE) and increasing service satisfaction. Communication parameters are secondary. Future mobile communications will have to focus on new issues such as green communications, video coding and video transmission.
In his research, Dr. Zhou demonstrates how to develop a fully distributed QoE-aware multimedia communication scheme (QAMCS). The scheme also maximizes user satisfaction in the absence of a central controller reaching a new degree of performance to exploit. Dr. Zhou is the Best paper award winner at the 8th International Conference on Mobile Multimedia Communications 2015.
We will follow cutting edge research updates during Mobimedia 2016 that will take place on June 18-20, 2016 in Xi’an, People’s Republic of China.
Read full interview with Dr. Liang Zhou here below.
What is, in your opinion, the main contribution MobiMedia 2015 brought to the field of Mobile Multimedia Communications?
As the video traffic has dominated the data flow of the smartphones, traditional cellular communications face substantial transmission challenges. Mobile multimedia communications, as a trend in the near future, have received considerable attention recently. In particular, the next generation of mobile communications (5G), the service of large-scale of multimedia communications has become the important feature. MobiMedia 2015 collects lots of excellent works on the advances of the multimedia communications. Many researchers get together to discuss some important issues on mobile multimedia communications, for example, green communications, video coding, video transmission, etc. In summary, MobiMedia 2015 is a successful event, and it has a great impact on mobile multimedia communications.
In your paper, you presented a study on QoE in Communication. What are the most important challenges it has to overcome?
Actually, QoE contains some subjective factors. So, the most important challenge lies in how to evaluate this subjective metric in an objective manner. Usually, we collect more than 100 people to participate the QoE testing, and using the mean opinion score (MOS) as the metric.
The theme of ‘user satisfaction’ has become paramount in almost all marketing decisions. What do you think could be the future of this type of communication, from the ICT point of view?
Good question! ‘User satisfaction’ also becomes very important in communications right now. For example, in the 5G, the goal of the communication from the transmission speed transfers to ‘user satisfaction’. That is because, from the perspective of the users, we do not care about the communications parameter (rate, jitter, etc.), but we pay attention to the service satisfaction. That’s the basis of QoE.
