Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Rate Adaptation for Adaptive 360-Degree Video Streaming

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based rate adaptation algorithm for adaptive 360-degree video streaming, which is able to maximize the quality of experience of viewers by adapting the transmitted video quality to the time-varying network conditions. Specifically, to reduce the possible switching latency of the field of view (FoV), we design a new QoE metric by introducing a penalty term for the large buffer occupancy. A scalable FoV method is further proposed to alleviate the combinatorial explosion of the action space in the DRL formulation. Then, we model the rate adaptation logic as a Markov decision process and employ the DRL-based algorithm to dynamically learn the optimal video transmission rate. Simulation results show the superior performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the existing algorithms.