Evaluation of throughput prediction for adaptive bitrate control using trace-based emulation

TY - JOUR

T1 - Evaluation of throughput prediction for adaptive bitrate control using trace-based emulation

AU - Wei, Bo

AU - Song, Hang

AU - Wang, Shangguang

AU - Kanai, Kenji

AU - Katto, Jiro

PY - 2019/1/1

Y1 - 2019/1/1

N2 - Dynamic adaptive video streaming over HTTP (DASH) is widely studied and has been adopted in modern video players to ensure user quality of experience (QoE). In DASH, adaptive bitrate control is a key part whose ultimate goal is to maximize video bitrate while minimizing rebuffering. Throughput prediction plays an important role in helping select the proper video bitrate dynamically. In this paper, we studied the influence of throughput prediction on adaptive video streaming. Because the real-world network is dynamic, different methods need to be tested with large-scale deployments and analyzed statistically. However, this is difficult in academic research. Therefore, we established a reproducible trace-based emulation environment, which enables us to compare different methods quantitatively under the artificially same condition, with limited experiments. The throughput prediction methods are implemented into DASH to evaluate the effect on QoE for video streaming. The results indicate that the prediction method using long short-term memory (LSTM) performs better than the other methods. However, throughput prediction alone is not enough to ensure high QoE. To further improve the QoE, we proposed the decision map method (DMM), where the buffer occupancy is also incorporated to make a selection. By using this decision map, the choice of bitrate can be smarter than that when only prediction information is used. The total QoE is further improved by 32.1% in the ferry trace, which shows the effectiveness of DMM in further improving the performance of throughput prediction in adaptive bitrate control.

AB - Dynamic adaptive video streaming over HTTP (DASH) is widely studied and has been adopted in modern video players to ensure user quality of experience (QoE). In DASH, adaptive bitrate control is a key part whose ultimate goal is to maximize video bitrate while minimizing rebuffering. Throughput prediction plays an important role in helping select the proper video bitrate dynamically. In this paper, we studied the influence of throughput prediction on adaptive video streaming. Because the real-world network is dynamic, different methods need to be tested with large-scale deployments and analyzed statistically. However, this is difficult in academic research. Therefore, we established a reproducible trace-based emulation environment, which enables us to compare different methods quantitatively under the artificially same condition, with limited experiments. The throughput prediction methods are implemented into DASH to evaluate the effect on QoE for video streaming. The results indicate that the prediction method using long short-term memory (LSTM) performs better than the other methods. However, throughput prediction alone is not enough to ensure high QoE. To further improve the QoE, we proposed the decision map method (DMM), where the buffer occupancy is also incorporated to make a selection. By using this decision map, the choice of bitrate can be smarter than that when only prediction information is used. The total QoE is further improved by 32.1% in the ferry trace, which shows the effectiveness of DMM in further improving the performance of throughput prediction in adaptive bitrate control.

KW - adaptive bitrate control

KW - DASH

KW - QoE

KW - Throughput prediction

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85066939720&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85066939720&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2909399

DO - 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2909399

M3 - Article

VL - 7

SP - 51346

EP - 51356

JO - IEEE Access

JF - IEEE Access

SN - 2169-3536

M1 - 8681430

ER -