Hierarchical Game-Theoretic Framework for Live Video Transmission with Dynamic Network Computing Integration

Abstract

Recently, live streaming technology has been widely utilized in areas such as online gaming, e-healthcare, and video conferencing. The increasing network and computational resources required for live streaming increase the cost of content providers and Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which may lead to increased latency or even unavailability of live streaming services. The current research primarily focuses on providing high-quality services by assessing the resource status of network nodes individually. However, the role assignment within nodes and the interconnectivity among nodes are often overlooked. To fill this gap, we propose a hierarchical game theory-based live video transmission framework to coordinate the heterogeneity of live tasks and nodes and to improve the resource utilization of nodes and the service satisfaction of users. Secondly, the service node roles are set as producers who are closer to the live streaming source and provide content, consumers who are closer to the end users and process data, and silent nodes who do not participate in the service process, and a non-cooperative game-based role competition algorithm is designed to improve the node resource utilization. Furthermore, a matching-based optimal path algorithm for media services is designed to establish optimal matching associations among service nodes to optimize the service experience. Finally, extensive simulation experiments show that our approach performs better in terms of service latency and bandwidth.