We consider the problem of optimizing video delivery for a network supporting video clients streaming stored video. Specifically, we consider the problem of jointly optimizing network resource allocation and video quality adaptation. Our objective is to fairly maximize video clients' Quality of Experience (QoE) realizing tradeoffs among the mean quality, temporal variability in quality, and fairness, incorporating user preferences on rebuffering and cost of video delivery. We present a simple asymptotically optimal online algorithm, NOVA, to solve the problem. NOVA is asynchronous, and using minimal communication, distributes the tasks of resource allocation to network controller, and quality adaptation to respective video clients. Video quality adaptation in NOVA is also optimal for standalone video clients, and is well suited for use with DASH framework. Further, we extend NOVA for use with more general QoE models, networks shared with other traffic loads and networks using fixed legacy resource allocation.
@cite_26: Mobile multimedia applications require networks that optimally allocate resources and adapt to dynamically changing environments. Cross-layer design (CLD) is a new paradigm that addresses this challenge by optimizing communication network architectures across traditional layer boundaries. In this article we discuss the relevant technical challenges of CLD and focus on application-driven CLD for video streaming over wireless networks. We propose a cross-layer optimization strategy that jointly optimizes the application layer, data link layer, and physical layer of the protocol stack using an application-oriented objective function in order to maximize user satisfaction. In our experiments we demonstrate the performance gain achievable with this approach. We also explore the trade-off between performance gain and additional computation and communication cost introduced by cross-layer optimization. Finally, we outline future research challenges in CLD.
@cite_22: In this paper, we systematically formulate the problem of multi-user wireless video transmission as a multi-user Markov decision process (MUMDP) by explicitly considering the users' heterogeneous video traffic characteristics, time-varying network conditions as well as, importantly, the dynamic coupling among the users' resource allocations across time, which are often ignored in existing multi-user video transmission solutions. To comply with the decentralized wireless networks' architecture, we propose to decompose the MUMDP into multiple local MDPs using Lagrangian relaxation. Unlike in conventional multi-user video transmission solutions stemming from the network utility maximization framework, the proposed decomposition enables each wireless user to individually solve its own local MDP (i.e. dynamic single-user cross-layer optimization) and the network coordinator to update the Lagrangian multipliers (i.e. resource prices) based on not only current, but also the future resource needs of all users, such that the long-term video quality of all users is maximized. This MUMDP solution provides us the necessary foundations and structures for solving multiuser video communication problems. However, to implement this framework in practice requires statistical knowledge of the experienced environment dynamics, which is often unavailable before transmission time. To overcome this obstacle, we propose a novel online learning algorithm, which allows the wireless users to simultaneously update their policies at multiple states during each time slot. This is different from conventional learning solutions, which often update the current visited state per time slot. The proposed learning algorithm can significantly improve the learning performance, thereby dramatically improving the video quality experienced by the wireless users over time. Our simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed MUMDP framework as compared to conventional multi-user video transmission solutions.
@cite_21: We present a new stochastic service model with capacity sharing and interruptions, appropriate for the evaluation of the quality of real-time streaming (RTS), like e.g. mobile TV, in wireless cellular networks. The general model takes into account multi-class Markovian process of call arrivals, (to capture different radio channel conditions, requested streaming bit-rates and durations) and allows for a general resource allocation policy saying which users are temporarily denied the requested fixed streaming bit-rates (put in outage) due to resource constraints. We give expressions for several important performance characteristics of the model, including mean time spent in outage and mean number of outage incidents for a typical user of a given class. These expressions involve only stationary probabilities of the (free) traffic demand process, which is a vector of independent Poisson random variables describing the number of users of different classes. In order to analyze RTS in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular networks, we specify our general model assuming orthogonal user channels with the peak bit-rates close to the theoretical Shannon's bound in the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, which leads to the resource constraints in a multi-rate linear form. In this setting we consider a natural class of least-effort-served-first resource allocation policies, for which the characteristics of the model can be further evaluated using Fourier analysis of Poisson variables. Within this class we identify and evaluate an optimal and a fair policy, the latter being suggested by LTE implementations. We also propose some intermediate policies, which allow to solve the optimality fairness tradeoff caused by unequal user radio-channel conditions. Our results can be used for the evaluation of the quality of RTS in LTE networks and dimensioning of these networks.
@cite_16: In this paper, we present a proxy-based solution for adapting the scalable video streams at the edge of a wireless network, which can respond quickly to highly dynamic wireless links. Our design adopts the scalable video coding (SVC) technique for lightweight rate adaptation at the edge. We derive a QoE model, i.e., rate-quality tradeoff model, that relates the maximum subjective quality under a given rate by choosing the optimal frame rate and quantization stepsize. The proxy iteratively allocates rates of different video streams to maximize a weighted sum of video qualities associated with different streams, based on the periodically observed link throughputs and the sending buffer status. Simulation studies show that our scheme consistently outperforms TFRC in terms of agility to track link qualities and overall quality of all streams. In addition, the proposed scheme supports differential services for different streams, and competes fairly with TCP flows.
@cite_6: 
@cite_23: Multi-user video streaming over wireless channels is a challenging problem, where the demand for better video quality and small transmission delays needs to be reconciled with the limited and often time-varying communication resources. This paper presents a framework for joint network optimization, source adaptation, and deadline-driven scheduling for multi-user video streaming over wireless networks. We develop a joint adaptation, resource allocation and scheduling (JARS) algorithm, which allocates the communication resource based on the video users' quality of service, adapts video sources based on smart summarization, and schedules the transmissions to meet the frame delivery deadlines. The proposed algorithm leads to near full utilization of the network resources and satisfies the delivery deadlines for all video frames. Substantial performance improvements are achieved compared with heuristic schemes that do not take the interactions between multiple users into consideration.
@cite_2: We consider the design of a scheduling policy for video streaming in a wireless network formed by several users and helpers (e.g., base stations). In such networks, any user is typically in the range of multiple helpers. Hence, an efficient policy should allow the users to dynamically select the helper nodes to download from and determine adaptively the quality level of the requested video segment. In order to obtain a tractable formulation, we follow a “divide and conquer” approach. First, we formulate a network utility maximization (NUM) problem where the network utility function is a concave and component-wise nondecreasing function of the time-averaged users' requested video quality index, and maximization is subject to the stability of all queues in the system. Second, we solve the NUM problem by using a Lyapunov drift plus penalty approach, obtaining a dynamic adaptive scheme that decomposes into two building blocks: 1) adaptive video quality and helper selection (run at the user nodes); and 2) dynamic allocation of the helper-to-user transmission rates (run at the help nodes). Our solution provably achieves NUM optimality in a strong per-sample path sense (i.e., without assumptions of stationarity and ergodicity). Third, we observe that, since all queues in the system are stable, all requested video chunks shall be eventually delivered. Fourth, in order to translate the requested video quality into the effective video quality at the user playback, it is necessary that the chunks are delivered within their playback deadline. This requires that the largest delay among all queues at the helpers serving any given user is less than the pre-buffering time of that user at its streaming session startup phase. In order to achieve this condition with high probability, we propose an effective and decentralized (albeit heuristic) scheme to adaptively calculate the pre-buffering and re-buffering time at each user. In this way, the system is forced to work in the “smooth streaming regime,” i.e., in the regime of very small playback buffer underrun rate. Through simulations, we evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm under realistic assumptions of a network with densely deployed helper and user nodes, including user mobility, variable bit-rate video coding, and users joining or leaving the system at arbitrary times.
@cite_34: 
@cite_10: We study how protocol design for various functionalities within a communication network architecture can be viewed as a distributed resource allocation problem. This involves understanding what resources are, how to allocate them fairly, and perhaps most importantly, how to achieve this goal in a distributed and stable fashion. We start with ideas of a centralized optimization framework and show how congestion control, routing and scheduling in wired and wireless networks can be thought of as fair resource allocation. We then move to the study of controllers that allow a decentralized solution of this problem. These controllers are the analytical equivalent of protocols in use on the Internet today, and we describe existing protocols as realizations of such controllers. The Internet is a dynamic system with feedback delays and flows that arrive and depart, which means that stability of the system cannot be taken for granted. We show how to incorporate stability into protocols, and thus, prevent undesirable network behavior. Finally, we consider a futuristic scenario where users are aware of the effects of their actions and try to game the system. We will see that the optimization framework is remarkably robust even to such gaming.
The problem of video delivery optimization in wireless networks has been studied in many works, for instance, see @cite_22 @cite_23 @cite_16 @cite_34 @cite_6 @cite_2 @cite_21 @cite_26 which utilize extensions of Network Utility Maximization (NUM) framework (see @cite_10 ). The main focus of @cite_22 and @cite_23 is real-time interactive video which present the challenge of meeting strict delivery deadlines. Papers @cite_16 and @cite_34 study video delivery optimization in wireless networks considering simpler QoE models, and do not explicitly incorporate rebuffering (nor cost) into their respective optimization frameworks, and instead control rebuffering through network congestion control. Using static QoE models, @cite_2 and @cite_21 study the resource allocation component for video delivery accounting for user dynamics. A major weakness of the aforementioned papers is the limited nature of the associated QoE models (that are essentially just the mean quality) and their lack of flexibility in managing incorporating user preferences related to rebuffering and cost.