Bitrate-adaptive and quality-aware HTTP video streaming with the multi-access edge computing server handoff control

Abstract

To deal with the coming Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)-based 5G and the future 6G wireless mobile network environment, a Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC)-based video streaming method using the proposed quality-aware video bitrate adaption and MEC server handoff control mechanisms for Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) video streaming was proposed in this work. Since the user is moving, the attached Base Station (BS) of the cellular network can be changed, i.e., the BS handoff can happen, which results in the corresponding MEC server handoff. Thus, this work proposed the MEC server handoff control mechanism to make the playing quality be smooth when the MEC server handoff happens. To have the MEC server to be able to derive the video bit rate for each video segment of the MPEG-DASH video streaming and to have the smooth video streaming when the MEC server handoff happens, the proposed method (i) derives the estimated bandwidth using the adaptive filter mechanism, (ii) generates some candidate video bit rates by considering the estimated bandwidth and the buffer occupancy situation in the client side and then (iii) selects a video bit rate from the candidate ones considering video quality’s stability. For the video quality’s stability concern, the proposed method considered not only (i) both bandwidth and buffer issues but also (ii) the long-term quality variation and the short-term quality variation to have the adaptive video streaming. The results of the performance evaluation, which was executed in a lab-wide experimental LTE network eNB system, shown that the proposed method has the more stable video quality for the MPEG-DASH video streaming over the wireless mobile network.