CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a national stage entry of International Application No. PCT/CN2017/092361, filed Jul. 10, 2017, entitled “ENHANCEMENT OF QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE MEASUREMENT COLLECTION REPORTING” which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

FIELD

The present invention relates to quality of experience measurement collection and reporting for streaming and other services. More specifically, the present invention exemplarily relates to measures (including methods, apparatuses and computer program products) for realizing enhancement of quality of experience measurement collection reporting.

BACKGROUND

Mobile data transmission and data services are constantly making progress. A growing consumer demand for mobile video services is one of the key drivers of the evolution of new wireless multimedia solutions towards delivering enhanced quality of experience (QoE). Namely, in view of that various video streaming applications and interactive video applications like videoconferencing are to be supported, wireless networks need to be optimized for the delivery of a range of video content and video-based applications.

In particular, video communication over mobile broadband networks is challenging due to limitations in bandwidth and difficulties in maintaining high reliability, quality, and latency demands imposed by rich multimedia applications. These challenges are to be met in order to deliver higher user capacity to serve more users and also deliver enhanced QoE for a rich set of video applications.

For the user QoE to be accurately assessed, evaluation methodologies and performance metrics are necessary, while respective information are to be transmitted from a communication endpoint near the experience to the network. Quality of experience measurement collection (QMC) and reporting ensures obtaining these QoE related information. QoE metrics and QoE reporting configuration parameters and QoE reporting procedures are known to be used for quality estimation.

FIG. 7shows a schematic diagram of a system environment with signaling variants and in particular illustrates minimization of drive tests (MDT) enhancement for supporting QoE reporting. The main concept of MDT is to exploit commercial user equipments (UE)—their measurement capabilities and geographically spread nature—for collecting radio measurements, instead of sending engineers directly to a concerning area and obtaining radio measurements in a hand-operated manner to collect network quality information.

It is further known that a QMC report may be triggered in a UE application layer (e.g. a dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP (DASH) client), while the content/format is transparent for UE Access Stratum (AS) layer. Different from other MDT measurement, QoE measurement report triggering mechanism (event and periodic report triggering) are controlled by the DASH client but are not generated by a radio access network (RAN) entity. According to a known approach, in downlink a container in a radio resource control (RRC) measurement control message is to transfer the QoE metrics configuration from evolved NodeB (eNB) to UE and in uplink a container in an RRC measurement report message is to transfer QoE metrics reporting from UE to eNB. The container of QoE metrics configuration will be received from core network (CN) in a signaling based QMC initiation way or from operation and maintenance (O&M) in a management based QMC initiation way.

It is further known to use a data radio bearer (DRB) to transfer QoE metrics reporting data and/or QoE metrics configuration instead of using the above-mentioned container.

Hence, the content/format of QoE metrics and QoE reporting configuration parameters is transparent for RAN network entity (eNB, gNB, Radio Network Controller (RNC)). QoE measurement report triggering mechanism (event and periodic report triggering) is controlled by the DASH Client, not by the RAN entity. The RAN network entity is just used as a medium to pass information to the UE. The RAN entity does not know the reporting data's frequency and exact data size from UE application layer.

The rough report data size that can match a single RRC message is maximum 8188 bytes. A data compress function may be supported in UE application layer.

An issue with the above outlined known approach is that the unaware RAN entity cannot apply appropriate control of the transmissions in relation to QMC.

However, frequent transmission in uplink for such big data may/must occupy lots of Uu interface resources (Uu interface: air interface of UE) and then strongly impact other ongoing services and even critical services. Such impacting does not only relate to different services of the UE itself, but also to different UEs' services in one cell. In this regard, the UE behavior is out of control of the radio network side or undefined, such that the UE's reporting behaviour may bring trouble to the network in uplink. The respective network entity is in addition not aware of how to apply charging policies and is not able to differentiate content of the triggered session.

The above introduced approach to include a container for the QoE configuration in RRC message from eNB to UE and to include a container for the QoE report in RRC message from UE to eNB is a rather simple approach.

A more complicated approach is to include the QoE configuration with each QoE metric and reporting criteria in RRC message from eNB to UE by the eNB decoding the configuration container received from core network (CN) or from operation and maintenance (O&M) to produce the legacy AS layer measurement configuration, and to include the QoE report in RRC message from UE AS to eNB by the UE AS decoding the reporting container received from UE application layer/NAS layer to produce the legacy AS layer measurement report.

While with such approach the above-mentioned issue that the RAN network cannot suppress the UE's reporting behavior may be addressed, it is too complicated to be implemented in eNB and UE separately per each QoE metric. Namely, in case the eNB can interpret any QoE metrics and set RAN controlled criteria when received relative information from CN or O&M, the measurement report is fully controlled in RAN network entity by using a legacy measurement management way.

However, as mentioned, the approach is too complicated to be implemented in eNB and UE as it asks eNB and UE AS to interpret application layer defined data content/format and translate to for radio specific measurement and report. It increases work load of eNB and UE AS too much and is not attractive for vendors to support.

Hence, the problem still arises that the RAN network entity needs to be able to suppress UE's reporting behavior bringing trouble to the network in uplink with manageable effort.

Hence, there is a need to provide for enhancement of quality of experience measurement collection reporting.

SUMMARY

Various exemplary embodiments of the present invention aim at addressing at least part of the above issues and/or problems and drawbacks.

Various aspects of exemplary embodiments of the present invention are set out in the appended claims.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method comprising receiving service quality reporting configuration information, generating service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, forwarding said service quality reporting configuration information, and deploying said service quality reporting resource limitation parameters.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method comprising receiving service quality reporting configuration information, generating a service quality report based on said service quality reporting configuration information, deciding whether to transmit said service quality report dependent on service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, and transmitting said service quality report based on a result of said deciding.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus comprising at least one processor, at least one memory including computer program code, and at least one interface configured for communication with at least another apparatus, the at least one processor, with the at least one memory and the computer program code, being configured to cause the apparatus to perform receiving service quality reporting configuration information, generating service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, forwarding said service quality reporting configuration information, and deploying said service quality reporting resource limitation parameters.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus comprising at least one processor, at least one memory including computer program code, and at least one interface configured for communication with at least another apparatus, the at least one processor, with the at least one memory and the computer program code, being configured to cause the apparatus to perform receiving service quality reporting configuration information, generating a service quality report based on said service quality reporting configuration information, deciding whether to transmit said service quality report dependent on service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, and transmitting said service quality report based on a result of said deciding.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus comprising receiving circuitry configured to receive service quality reporting configuration information, generating circuitry configured to generate service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, forwarding circuitry configured to forward said service quality reporting configuration information, and deploying circuitry configured to deploy said service quality reporting resource limitation parameters.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus comprising receiving circuitry configured to receive service quality reporting configuration information, generating circuitry configured to generate a service quality report based on said service quality reporting configuration information, deciding circuitry configured to decide whether to transmit said service quality report dependent on service quality reporting resource limitation parameters, and transmitting circuitry configured to transmit said service quality report based on a result of said deciding.

According to an exemplary aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer program product comprising computer-executable computer program code which, when the program is run on a computer (e.g. a computer of an apparatus according to any one of the aforementioned apparatus-related exemplary aspects of the present invention), is configured to cause the computer to carry out the method according to any one of the aforementioned method-related exemplary aspects of the present invention.

Such computer program product may comprise (or be embodied) a (tangible) computer-readable (storage) medium or the like on which the computer-executable computer program code is stored, and/or the program may be directly loadable into an internal memory of the computer or a processor thereof.

Any one of the above aspects enables an efficient suppression of UE's measurement collection reporting to thereby solve at least part of the problems and drawbacks identified in relation to the prior art.

By way of exemplary embodiments of the present invention, there is provided enhancement of quality of experience measurement collection reporting. More specifically, by way of exemplary embodiments of the present invention, there are provided measures and mechanisms for realizing enhancement of quality of experience measurement collection reporting.

Thus, improvement is achieved by methods, apparatuses and computer program products enabling/realizing enhancement of quality of experience measurement collection reporting.

