The fifth meeting of ITU-T Study Group 12 (Performance, QoS and QoE) in the 2009-2012 Study Period, convened by TSB Collective letter 6/12, took place in Geneva, from 31 October to 9 November 2011. The number of participants (115) was as strong and diverse as ever, involving 35 countries, with several new countries and companies attending. 88 contributions and 195 TDs were received, of which 71 involved liaisons, reinforcing SG12’s lead ITU-T role regarding Performance, QoS and QoE. SG12 produced 30 outgoing Liaison Statements.

The meeting ran paperless as announced in the above-mentioned Collective letter.

Approval of revised study Question 9/12

During the last meeting it was agreed to revise Question 9/12 to extend its scope to cover statistical analysis methods and procedures for evaluation of objective methods. The revised text was agreed and submitted for endorsement to TSAG. The revised wording of Q 9/12 was approved during the opening plenary session of this SG12 meeting.

Future meetings

Rapporteur’s meetings

Eight Questions (Qs 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14 and 17/12) requested interim Rapporteur’s meetings, these requests were agreed.

Next meeting of SG12

The next meeting of SG12, which will be the last meeting of this study period, will be held in Geneva from 29 May to 7 June 2012.

Results of the meeting of Working Party 1/12 – Terminals and multimedia subjective assessment

WP1/12 works on transmission characteristics of terminals for fixed circuit-switched, mobile and packet-switched (IP) networks and the related telephonometric methodologies, as well as analysis methods using complex measurement signals. Hands-free communication in vehicles is an important study item. Also addressed are methods, tools and test plans for the subjective assessment of speech, audio and audiovisual quality interactions.
The foreseen evolution of activities is to consider bandwidth extension and binaural perception and this is reflected in the work plan of Q3, 4, 5 and 6.
Q3, 5 and 6 have interim meeting in Copenhagen (12-14 March 2012).
The next meeting of FG CarCOM is planned for 8-9 December 2011 in Braunschweig.
The next meeting of FG Driver Distraction is planned for 12-13 December 2011 in Geneva.
Q7 opened an action item on test methodology for web browsing and browser based applications with the goal to draft a new Recommendation (P.STMWeb) Q7 has interim meeting in ITU-T at Geneva (27-29 March 2012).
Q18 worked on tasks and scenarios to be used when assessing quality of multiparty conference or video conferences.

Results related to Recommendations

Consent was reached on three revised Recommendations:

• P.57 " Artificial ears"
• P.58 " Head and torso simulator for telephonometry”
• P.501 " Test signals for use in telephonometry"

Other results

Test results of characterization of G.729.1 DTX/CNG extension using G.720.1A were discussed and a summary of results was drafted to be sent to Q10/16.

Results of the meeting of Working Party 2/12 - Objective models and tools for multimedia quality

It is the purpose of WP 2/12  to cover the end-to-end transmission performance of networks, terminals and their interactions, in relation to the perceived quality and its objective assessment as well as guidance and modelling in the field of transmission planning. This includes beside perceptual-based objective methods also parametric models and a framework for diagnostic functions.

Results related to Recommendations

Consent was reached on revised Recommendation

• Revised Recommendation P.56 “Objective measurement of active speech level” – a new Annex C on full band speech signal measurement was added.
• Revised Recommendation G.107 “The E-model: a computational model for use in transmission planning” – the contents of Appendix II has been moved to G.107.1.
• New Recommendation G.107.1 “Wideband E-Model”.

Agreement was reached on 

• Revised Appendix I of Rec. P.862.3, “Reference values for objective quality derived by P.862 for ITU-T/GSM standard codecs” – the error in Table I.3 in Appendix I was corrected.
• New Appendix III of Rec. P.863, “Prediction of acoustically recorded narrowband speech”
• New Implementer’s Guide I to Rec. P.863, “Mapping function”
• New Implementer’s Guide II to Rec. P.863, “Bug fixes”.

Other results

• Five documents – required for model submission –  were approved by Q14/12 as frozen:
• “Processing Chain for P.NAMS/P.NBAMS Hypothetic Reference Circuits”
• “P.NAMS Detailed Requirement Specification”
• “P.NBAMS Detailed Requirement Specification”
• “Statistical Evaluation Procedure for P.NAMS and P.NBAMS”
• “P.NAMS and P.NBAMS Test plan” 
• It was agreed to develop P.ONRA as a collaboratively developed model in Q9/12, where the recommended model of ETSI [EG 202 396-3] is used as a first model to be evaluated as a candidate for P.ONRA.

Related activities

VQEG and SG9 informed Q9/12 about the progress and current work items in their video evaluation projects. There was recently J.341 approved that is a full-reference objective quality prediction method for HDTV. Current work items are 3D-TV, where the focus is still the evaluation of subjective test methods as well as the next step of the evaluation of multi-media quality prediction (MM2) under consideration of audio-visual signals. The previous project in multi-media was focused on video content only.

Results of the meeting of Working Party 3/12 – Multimedia QoS and QoE

WP3/12 is responsible for conducting studies leading to new Recommendations related to multimedia Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) in emerging networks. This includes operational aspects of QoS/QoE, end to end interworking and traffic management, identification of KPIs and QoS metrics for different services, multimedia performance assessment methods and models, and fundamental performance criteria for packet-based networks.

Results related to Recommendations

Consent was reached on the revision of two Recommendations:

• Y.1541 “Network performance objectives for IP-based services”- the main revision is additional material intended to educate application designers and users on the process to develop the existing classes and propose new classes when they are warranted

and on two new Recommendation

• E.803 (E.QoSNT) “Quality of Service (QoS) parameters of non-utilisation stages of ICT services”
• Y.1565 (Y.15HN) “Home Network Performance Parameters”

Other results

• Under Q11/12 a new work item “G.Tandem-QoE” was agreed. The initial focus of this work is to gather any measurements or analysis of voice quality impairments arising from tandem use of voice enhancement devices. Contributions on this topic are requested.
• Under Q 12/12 new material was introduced by the Regional Group for Africa on Guidelines on Quality of Service of Interconnected Networks using Internet Protocol. It was agreed to merge the work previously envisaged under Y.OAQoS with this new proposal, and to form a new draft Recommendation Y. RMQoSInt “Roadmap of Quality of Service of Interconnected Networks using Internet Protocol”.
• Under Q 13/12 a new work item, tentatively called G.QoE-Web, regarding the QoE of web-browsing, was agreed. The main motivation is that, due to current sophisticated technologies for web content, a simple mapping between network delay and user perception is not possible any more, and that we need a means for estimating QoE by taking into account complex characteristics of recent web content and web-based applications.