KR20060055190A - Multimedia service quality evaluation method for wireless communication networks - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention is to copy the packets passing along the network link from the mobile terminal in an electrical manner in real time, to detect the packet through the packet filtering rules set for the measurement of the quality of service information, and the service of the mobile terminal from the detected packet After extracting the data necessary to calculate the quality indicator (QI), using the extracted data, the service quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal is calculated and stored, and then the service is calculated for each calculated service quality indicator (QI). The normalization value is calculated by performing quality normalization, and the key quality indicator (KQI) is calculated by reflecting the service deterioration index and the weight of each service quality indicator (QI) in the concept of service availability. The quality indicators are weighted by the service deterioration index and the key quality indicators (KQI) to the concept of service availability. Young to calculate a quality of service (QoS).

According to the present invention, it is possible to objectively evaluate the quality level of each service experienced by the customer, thereby systematically managing and diagnosing the quality of experience for multimedia services such as a video call service and a video on demand (VoD). It is possible to improve the haptic quality that the user feels.

Service Quality Index, Service Availability, KQI, Weight, Normalization, Degradation Index

Description

Multimedia Service Quality Evaluation Method for Wireless Communication Networks

1 is a block diagram schematically showing the configuration of a SANQ system to which the present invention is applied.

2 is a flowchart illustrating a method for evaluating a multimedia service quality according to an embodiment of the present invention.

The present invention relates to a method for evaluating the quality of a multimedia service in a communication network, and more particularly, to derive a quality indicator (QI) by detecting, processing and analyzing data passing along a network link. After the key quality indicators (KQI) are sequentially calculated, the present invention relates to a method of hierarchically calculating the quality indicators for the target service.

Today's networks that provide multimedia services are suffering from frequent bottlenecks and congestion due to the explosive increase in Internet usage and traffic, which is causing the problem of poor quality of network services. In addition, indiscriminate service congestion caused by the emergence of various web-based applications does not guarantee stable services for core tasks.

As network utilization increases, the demand for a stable network service foundation is further heightened, and service operators are in urgent need of efficient traffic control and bandwidth management for optimal network operation and management.

For efficient traffic control and bandwidth management, it is necessary to continuously monitor the network network for quality assessment of the network and data, and to calculate and analyze quality indicators according to the quality assessment.

However, in the related art, there is no general and systematic method for evaluating the quality of multimedia services.

The present invention is to solve the conventional problems, comprehensively analyzes the entire section of the mobile phone network link for transmitting voice services and wireless Internet data, and establish a standard that can objectively determine the quality of the target service Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for evaluating multimedia service quality in a mobile communication network for managing and diagnosing multimedia service quality.

The present invention for achieving the above object is a first step of copying the packet passing through the network link from the mobile terminal in an electrical manner in real time, and detecting the packet through a packet filtering rule set for the measurement of the quality of service information; A second step of extracting data for calculating a quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal from the detected packet; A third step of calculating and storing a service quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal using the extracted data; A fourth step of calculating a normalization value by performing service quality normalization on each of the calculated quality of service indicators (QI); A fifth step of calculating a key quality indicator (KQI) by reflecting the service deterioration index and the weight of each service quality indicator (QI) in the concept of service availability; And a sixth step of calculating the quality of service (QoS) by reflecting the calculated quality index and the weight of each service quality index (KQI) in the concept of service availability. Provide quality assessment methods.

The present invention also provides a recording medium having recorded thereon a program for executing the method.

Hereinafter, exemplary embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. 1 is a block diagram schematically showing a configuration of a SANQ system to which the present invention is applied. The SANQ system 100 includes a SANQ agent 110, a QoS viewer 125, a QoS server 130, a database server 140, a database 150, and the like.

The SANQ agent 110 is an apparatus for carrying out the present invention, which is used along the network link (Iu-r, Iu-b, Iu-ps, Iu-cs, etc.) from the terminal to objectively and systematically evaluate the multimedia service quality. Copy the passing packets (control signals and user data) in real time, detect the packets according to packet filtering rules, and receive the packets necessary for calculating the quality indicator (QI) for the service in real time to receive the QI in real time. Calculate and store it in the database 150. The SANQ agent 110 calculates a key quality indicator (KQI) based on the QI stored in the database 150 and calculates a quality of service (QoS) based on the calculated key quality indicator.

The QoS viewer 125 graphically processes the service quality information of each user in an easy-to-understand form so that an operator can easily monitor the service quality information, and provides the GUI in a graphical user interface (GUI) form. QoS server 130 manages the operation of one or more SANQ agents 110. It also provides very useful information in connection with service level agreement (SLA) management system or network operation resource system (OSS) through an open interface. The database server 140 integrates and manages the data collected by the SANQ system 100 by statistical processing, and the database 150 is a space for storing such data.

Hereinafter, a function of calculating a service quality based on a key quality indicator (KQI) performed by the SANQ agent 110 will be described in more detail.

The SANQ agent 110 calculates the quality of service (QoS) based on the key quality indicators (KQI), and the service quality normalization process and the individual quality indicators that evaluate the individual quality indicators (QI) based on the same criteria. The concept of Service Degradation Factor, which indicates the degree of violation of service quality by each QI, and the weighting factor for the quality indicator are used.

In the normalization process, since the unit of the quality indicator (QI) measured in the mobile communication system is varied such as 'time', 'throughout', 'success rate', etc., it is necessary to correct various units as common units. In this way, the unit correction work is called a normalization process.

More specifically, the necessity of the normalization process, in order to define the service quality indicators, the present invention describes the concept of service availability, which means the degree to which a certain level of service quality is maintained between a service provider and a customer. Apply.

In general, the service availability is determined by the time that the service fails during the entire service period, which can be expressed as Equation 1 below.

Service Availability (%) = 100%-Service Failure (%)

The service failure situation may be defined as a set of situations in which a specific service does not satisfy a predetermined level, and such a situation is defined as an outage interval.

Service availability is calculated using the failure period as described above, the failure period may be evaluated at various levels, such as 'complete failure' or 'part failure' depending on the degree of failure. Therefore, in calculating the service availability, a weight is applied according to the degree of failure, and this weight is defined as a service degradation factor (SDF).

Table 1 shows an example of the service degradation index according to the present invention.

        Service degradation index     Event Type (Service Degradation Factor)               One            Out of service              0.8            A breakdown type              0.6            B breakdown type              0.5            C breakdown type              ...                ...               0              Normal service

In general, there are many factors that provide a failure for a service, and the service failure time varies for each type. In Table 1, the service deterioration factor is based on service failure time, where A failure is longer than C failure.

Through this, the service failure rate calculation equation may be expressed as Equation 2 below.

Accordingly, when serviceability is calculated by applying Equation 2 to Equation 1, the following Equation 3 is obtained.

However, the above-mentioned service availability is defined only as a temporal element such as total usage time and failure time. On the other hand, quality indicators (QI) measured in mobile communication systems vary in units such as 'time', 'throughout' and 'success rate'. Therefore, this unit correction operation, that is, the quality of service normalization process is required.

In order to normalize the quality of service, the SANQ agent 110 uses the quality indicator (QI) measurement as a 'minor' threshold (THmi) and a 'critical' threshold (THcr) of the quality indicator. Convert the value between 0 'and' 1 '. The converted value is expressed as N (QI).

At this time, the conversion process is divided into two cases according to the characteristics of the quality indicator (QI). In two cases, the increase in the measured quality indicator (QI) implies a deepening degree of quality violation (THcr> THmi) and vice versa (THcr <THmi), and the nature of the quality indicator (QI) ( Case) may be determined through a comparison process between the critical threshold value THcr and the minor threshold value THmi.

For example, if the critical threshold of the packet delay time is 10 seconds, the minor threshold is 5 seconds, and the actual measured value (QI) is 6 seconds, the longer the delay time, the worse the quality of service violation. So that it corresponds to THcr> THmi. At this time, N (QI) is calculated as (6-5) / (10-5) = 0.2, and it can be interpreted that the service quality of about 20% is violated.

As a result, the present invention calculates QI normalization process according to the nature of the quality indicators as shown in Table 2 and Table 3 below.

   No.          Condition     N (QI): QI normalized value     One      QI ≤ THmi              0     2      QI ≥ THcr              One     3  THmi <QI ≤ THcr   (QI-THmi) / (THcr-THmi)

(If THcr> THmi)

   No.          Condition     N (QI): QI normalized value     One      QI ≥ THmi              0     2      QI ≤ THcr              One     3  THcr <QI ≤ THmi   (THmi-QI) / (THmi-THcr)

(If THcr <THmi)

In the present invention, the service deterioration index (SDF) is defined to be the same as the quality index (QI) violation grade, and is commonly applied to all QIs. That is, SDF for calculating the key quality indicator (KQI) according to the critical threshold and the minor threshold is as shown in Table 4 and Table 5 below.

   No.     SDF         type       Condition     One       0        Normal      QI ≤ THmi     2      0.5        Minor  THmi <QI ≤ THma     3      0.6        Major  THma <QI ≤ THcr     4      0.9        Critical      THcr <QI

(If THcr> THmi)

   No.     SDF         type       Condition     One       0        Normal      QI ≥ THmi     2      0.5        Minor  THmi> QI ≥ THma     3      0.6        Major  THma> QI ≥ THcr     4      0.9        Critical      THcr> QI

(If THcr <THmi)

Meanwhile, the SANQ agent 110 calculates KQI reflecting the importance of the quality indicator QI by weighting each quality indicator QI. At this time, the weight of each quality indicator (QI) is arbitrarily determined by the designer in consideration of the effect on the service quality, but the higher the importance, the higher the weight.

According to the above description, if the key quality indicator KQI is calculated from the quality indicator QI by applying the service quality normalization, the service degradation index, and the service quality weighting value, the calculation of the key quality indicator KQI is given by Equation 4 below. Can be expressed as:

In Equation 4, the quality index QI is a lower quality index QI constituting the target quality index KQI, and n is a value of the lower quality index QI constituting the corresponding schedule quality KQI. Count w_ {i} is the weight for the i th of that quality indicator (QI), N (QI) is the normalization value for the i th of the quality indicator (QI), and SDF_ {i} is the Service degradation index for the i th.

When the SANQ agent 110 calculates the key quality index KQI as described above, the SANQ agent 110 calculates the quality index QoS for a specific service using the key quality index KQI. Key Quality Index (KQI) can be used to calculate sequential and hierarchical.

That is, the SANQ agent 110 applies the same service quality normalization, service degradation index, and service quality weight as described above, and calculates the service quality index (QoS) from the key quality index (KQI) as shown in Equation 5 below. do. In Equation 5 below, the key quality indicator KQI is a lower quality indicator KQI constituting the target quality indicator KQI, and n is a lower quality indicator constituting the corresponding quality of service indicator QS. KQI). w_ {i} is the weight for the i th of that key quality indicator (KQI), N (KQI) is the normalization value for the i th of the quality indicator (KQI), and SDF_ {i} is the corresponding key quality indicator (KQI) Is the service deterioration index for the i th).

Hereinafter, the multimedia service quality estimation method of the present invention performed by the SANQ agent 110 will be described with reference to FIG. 2. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method for evaluating a multimedia service quality according to an embodiment of the present invention.

The SANQ agent 110 copies the packet passing along the network link from the terminal in an electrical manner in real time and detects the packet through a packet filtering rule (S210). The SANQ agent 110 extracts only data necessary for QI calculation for each protocol after reassembly of fragmented packets of IP and TCP (S220).

Thereafter, the SANQ agent 110 calculates the QI of each user (S230), and stores the calculated QI data in the database 150 of the database server 140 (S240).

When the QI at each network link is stored in the database 150, the SANQ agent 110 calculates a normalization value by performing normalization on the QI as described above (S250). Subsequently, the normalized values thus calculated are substituted into Equation 4 to calculate a key quality indicator KQI (S260), and the calculated key quality indicator KQI is substituted into Equation 5 to calculate a service quality index (QoS). (S270).

The quality results measured and analyzed by the SANQ system 100 are displayed on the GUI screen by using the QoS viewer 125. At this time, the operator can see these results after logging in through the WEB.

The measured and analyzed quality results are displayed in detail step by step. In other words, the measurement result is basically displayed in detail step by step in terms of local and network components based on MAP. In the case of regional perspective, the initial screen displays the quality of each region divided on the map of the whole country, and if you want to know the service quality of a specific region in detail, select the specific region and the quality of the specific region will be restored. Displayed in detail. In other words, it is possible to zoom in / out around the area. In the network component point of view, as in the above-described local point of view, the quality of service is extended from the upper network element to the lower network element level. For example, it may be indicated by initial SGSN quality, RNC quality, and Node-B quality.

Meanwhile, the measured and analyzed quality result may be displayed differently according to the grade of the logged in operator. In other words, the results of the measurement are displayed differently depending on the operator's interests. For example, the senior executive may be interested in national quality. For an engineer, this could be the quality of a particular area as the first page displayed after login. In other words, by dividing the level of each operator according to the operator's interests and authorization, the first page displayed when logging into the web can be set differently, and the right to access other pages or other items can be restricted. have.

On the other hand, the measured and analyzed quality results are displayed by mapping them to the MAP. In the past, when information required for MAP is displayed, the location of the base station is generally displayed based on the administrative area, and the coverage of the base station is assumed to be concentric or hexagonal. In this case, since the coverage of the actual base station is not taken into account, the quality analysis or understanding is poor. However, in the SANQ system 100 according to the preferred embodiment of the present invention, when displaying the quality information on the MAP, the actual coverage information is received and used to indicate the coverage of the actual base station. In this case, as the information input source, the coverage result analyzed by the mobile communication operator or the result of the wireless network design tool (for example, Cell PLAN) may be used. By doing so, the location information of the actual subscriber can be displayed on the MAP, and the extent of the actual coverage of the subscriber can be used to smoothly map the relationship between the quality information and the wireless network and to perform more efficient analysis. have.

The technical spirit of the present invention has been described above with reference to the accompanying drawings, but this is by way of example only and not intended to limit the present invention. In addition, it is obvious that any person skilled in the art can make various modifications and imitations without departing from the scope of the technical idea of the present invention.

The present invention enables the user to objectively evaluate the quality level of each service experienced by the customer, thereby systematically managing and diagnosing the quality of experience for multimedia services such as a video call service and a video on demand (VoD) service. It allows you to improve the quality of your feeling.

Claims (6)

A first step of copying a packet passing along the network link from the mobile terminal in an electrical manner in real time and detecting the packet through a packet filtering rule set for measuring service quality information; A second step of extracting data for calculating a quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal from the detected packet; A third step of calculating and storing a service quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal using the extracted data; A fourth step of calculating a normalization value by performing service quality normalization on each of the calculated quality of service indicators (QI); A fifth step of calculating a key quality indicator (KQI) by reflecting the service deterioration index and the weight of each service quality indicator (QI) in the concept of service availability; And And a sixth step of calculating a quality of service (QoS) by reflecting the calculated quality indicators based on the service deterioration index and the weights of the quality indicators (KQIs) in a concept of service availability. Assessment Methods. The method of claim 1, In the fourth step, the service quality normalization is performed by converting the QI measurement value into a value between '0' and '1' using the minor threshold and the critical threshold of the quality indicator. A method of evaluating the quality of multimedia services in a mobile communication network. The method of claim 1, Converting to a value between '0' and '1' by using the minor threshold and the critical threshold, if the quality of service indicator is less than or equal to the minor threshold when the critical threshold is greater than the minor threshold If the normalization value is '0' and the quality of service indicator (QI) is greater than or equal to the critical threshold, the normalization value is '1' and the quality of service (QI) is greater than the minor threshold and the critical threshold value. If smaller, a normalization value is calculated as (quality of service indicator-minor threshold) / (critical threshold-minor threshold). The method of claim 1, The fifth step is a method for evaluating multimedia quality of service in a mobile communication network, comprising calculating the main quality index (KQI) using the following equation. KQI (%) = left (1- {sum from {i = 1} to {n} {(w_ {i} CDOT N (QI_ {i}) CDOT SDF_ {i})}} over {n} right) TIMES `100 The quality of service indicator (QI) is a lower quality indicator (QI) constituting the main quality indicator (KQI), n is the number of lower quality indicators (QI) constituting the corresponding schedule quality (KQI) , w_ {i} is the weight for the i th of that quality indicator (QI), N (QI) is the normalization value for the i th of the quality of service indicator (QI), and SDF_ {i} is the corresponding quality indicator (QI) Service deterioration index for the i th of). The method of claim 4, wherein In the sixth step, a method for evaluating multimedia quality of service in a mobile communication network, comprising calculating the main quality index (KQI) using the following equation: QoS (%) = left (1- {sum from {i = 1} to {n} {(w_ {i} CDOT N (KQI) CDOT SDF_ {i})}} over {n} right) TIMES `100 The main quality indicator (KQI) is a lower quality indicator (KQI) constituting a target quality indicator (KQI), n is the number of lower quality indicators (KQI) constituting a corresponding quality of service (QoS), w_ {i} is the weight for the i th of that key quality indicator (KQI), N (KQI) is the normalization value for the i th of the quality indicator (KQI), and SDF_ {i} is the corresponding key quality indicator (KQI) Service Deterioration Index for the i th of On a server connected to the IP network, A first step of copying a packet passing along the network link from the mobile terminal in an electrical manner in real time and detecting the packet through a packet filtering rule set for measuring service quality information; A second step of extracting data for calculating a quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal from the detected packet; A third step of calculating and storing a service quality indicator (QI) of the mobile terminal using the extracted data; A fourth step of calculating a normalization value by performing service quality normalization on each of the calculated quality of service indicators (QI); A fifth step of calculating a key quality indicator (KQI) by reflecting the service deterioration index and the weight of each service quality indicator (QI) in the concept of service availability; And A computer on which a program for executing a sixth step of calculating a quality of service (QoS) is generated by reflecting the calculated quality index and the weight of each service quality index (KQI) in the concept of service availability. Recordable media that can be read by

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