Self-play reinforcement learning for video transmission

Abstract

Video transmission services adopt adaptive algorithms to ensure users' demands. Existing techniques are often optimized and evaluated by a function that linearly combines several weighted metrics. Nevertheless, we observe that the given function fails to describe the requirement accurately. Thus, such proposed methods might eventually violate the original needs. To eliminate this concern, we propose Zwei, a self-play reinforcement learning algorithm for video transmission tasks. Zwei aims to update the policy by straightforwardly utilizing the actual requirement. Technically, Zwei samples a number of trajectories from the same starting point, and instantly estimates the win rate w.r.t the competition outcome. Here the competition result represents which trajectory is closer to the assigned requirement. Subsequently, Zwei optimizes the strategy by maximizing the win rate. To build Zwei, we develop simulation environments, design adequate neural network models, and invent training methods for dealing with different requirements on various video transmission scenarios. Trace-driven analysis over two representative tasks demonstrates that Zwei optimizes itself according to the assigned requirement faithfully, outperforming the state-of-the-art methods under all considered scenarios.