QoE Evaluation of Adaptive Video Streaming Algorithms in Multi-user Networks

Adaptive bitrate control (ABR) is an important technique for video streaming. This technique selects the video quality adaptively according to various network conditions, to ensure the quality of experience (QoE) for users. In the previous works, the ABR methods are mainly tested in single user environment. In this paper, an emulation testbed is constructed for QoE performance evaluation in multi-user networks. The state-of-the-art ABR methods are incorporated into the proposed environment. Emulation experiments are carried out to evaluate the performance of the methods. Preliminary results show that in FESTIVE, which has the least QoE variation in the six-user experiments, the user QoE of the worst case is only 27.5% of that of best case, demonstrating that the state-of-the-art ABR methods are not effective enough to optimize the QoE for all users under multi-user condition. Future design of the ABR method should take factors such as the fairness and resource allocation into consideration.