Low-latency is a critical user Quality-of-Experience (QoE) metric for live video streaming. It poses significant challenges for streaming over the Internet. In this paper, we explore the design space of low-latency live video streaming by developing dynamic models and optimal control strategies. We further develop practical live video streaming algorithms within the Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework, namely MPC-Live, to maximize user QoE by adapting the video bitrate while maintaining low end-to-end video latency in dynamic network environment. Through extensive experiments driven by real network traces, we demonstrate that our live video streaming algorithms can improve the performance dramatically within latency range of two to five seconds.
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Fresher content or smoother playback?: a brownian-approximation framework for scheduling real-time wireless video streams
This paper presents a Brownian-approximation framework to optimize the quality of experience (QoE) for real-time video streaming in wireless networks. In real-time video streaming, one major challenge is to tackle the natural tension between the two most critical QoE metrics: playback latency and video interruption. To study this trade-off, we first propose an analytical model that precisely captures all aspects of the playback process of a real-time video stream, including playback latency, video interruptions, and packet dropping. Built on this model, we show that the playback process of a real-time video can be approximated by a two-sided reflected Brownian motion. Through such Brownian approximation, we are able to study the fundamental limits of the two QoE metrics and characterize a necessary and sufficient condition for a set of QoE performance requirements to be feasible. We propose a scheduling policy that satisfies any feasible set of QoE performance requirements and then obtain simple rules on the trade-off between playback latency and the video interrupt rates, in both heavy-traffic and under-loaded regimes. Finally, simulation results verify the accuracy of the proposed approximation and show that the proposed policy outperforms other popular baseline policies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1719384
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10296004
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM MobiHoc 2020
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 41 to 50
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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