Quality assessment of interactive voice applications

The conversational quality of a VoIP communication is dependent on several factors such as the coding process used, the network conditions and the type of error correction or concealment employed. Furthermore, the quality perceived by the users is also dependent on the characteristics of the conversation itself. Assessing this kind of communication is a very difficult problem, and most of the studies available in the literature simplify the issue by restricting the analysis to only one or two parameters. However, the number of potentially affecting factors is typically higher, and their joint effect on quality is complex. In this paper we study the combined effects of bit rate, forward error correction, loss rate, loss distribution, delay and jitter on the perceived conversational quality. In order to achieve this we use the pseudo-subjective quality assessment (PSQA) technique, which allows us to obtain accurate, subjective-like assessments, in real time if necessary. Our contributions are thus twofold: firstly, we offer a detailed analysis of the impact of these parameters and their interactions on the perceived conversational quality. Secondly, we show how the PSQA methodology can be used to provide accurate conversational quality estimations. 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.