End-to-End QoS Signaling for Future Multimedia Services in the NGN

The paper presents a model for Quality of Service (QoS) signaling for complex multimedia services in the next generation network (NGN), from establishing necessary QoS support at session setup, to further QoS modifications in response to dynamic changes during the session. The model aims to maximize user perceived quality, while taking into account constraints imposed by the user, network, and service itself. While the model is independent of the particular service and network scenario, we take a Networked Virtual Reality (NVR) service as a fairly good representative of intricate media-rich services in the NGN. We further propose a mapping onto the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), as the most prominent NGN-driven part of the current Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) architecture; and identify its possible functional enhancements for supporting services such as NVR.