Embedded Software Performance Monitoring Agent for VoIP, IPTV, and IP Videoconferencing

SQlive^™ is a breakthrough performance monitoring software application for Voice over IP, IPTV, and IP Videoconferencing, based on Telchemy's industry-leading VQmon performance analysis technology.

SQlive can be easily integrated or installed into mobile handsets and a wide range of end system and customer premises equipment (CPE), including IPTV set-top boxes and home gateways. SQlive is compact (<500 KB) and requires little CPU overhead, making it ideal for limited-resource environments such as a mobile smartphone* or set-top box.

SQlive non-intrusively monitors RTP or MPEG-2 Transport media streams, automatically detecting voice and video packets and identifying individual calls and video sessions. Because it uses a passive monitoring technology, SQlive provides 24x7 feedback on voice call and video session quality without a significant impact on network load.

SQlive provides real-time QoE measurements in the form of listening and conversational quality MOS and R-factor scores for VoIP calls, and video/audio/audio-video MOS and Video Service Transmission Quality (VSTQ) for IPTV and IP videoconferencing sessions. Quality reports for both voice and video include a detailed set of performance metrics and diagnostic data to help isolate the root cause(s) of service performance problems.

* Applications that require access to the raw packet stream on mobile handsets, such as SQlive, must be run as root or as a user with elevated privileges, or can be preinstalled into the mobile phone software image by the handset manufacturer.

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Key Advantages of SQlive

• Analyzes encrypted (scrambled) and unencrypted video streams

Unlike other video performance monitoring technologies, SQlive has the ability to extract quality information from encrypted video without decoding—a real advantage for applications where security, privacy rights, or Digital Rights Management (DRM) are important concerns.

• Measures impact of impairments on specific video content

The visibility of video impairments depends in part on the video content itself—for example, frame freezes tend to be more noticeable during high-motion scenes (such as a football game) than relatively static scenes (such as footage of a news anchor). SQlive performs high-level analysis of motion, detail, and panning levels, and uses the information to more accurately calculate its estimated perceptual quality scores.

• Calculates the impact of packet loss on specific video frame types

Because of the complex frame structure of IP video, the same degree of packet loss may cause severe quality degradation or may pass unnoticed, depending on which frame types are affected (see figure at right). SQlive identifies individual I, B, and P frames in the Group of Pictures (GoP) and calculates the impact of loss on each frame type, producing estimated perceptual quality scores that are significantly more accurate than those derived from overall packet loss measurements alone.

 

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