Constant playout rates: Resource allocation for improved user experience with live video streaming in 5G

Providing a high-quality real-time video streaming experience to mobile users is one of the biggest challenges in cellular networks. This is due to the need of these services for high rates with low variability, i.e., stable throughput, which is not easily accomplished given the competition among (an ever-increasing number of) users for limited network resources and the high variability of their channel conditions. A way to improve the user experience is by exploiting users’ buffers and the ability to provide a constant data rate to everyone, as one of the initially envisioned features of 5G networks. However, it was already shown that the latter is not very efficient, neither in terms of the achievable data rates nor in terms of the amount of resources left unused. In this paper, we provide a theoretical-analysis framework for resource allocation in 5G networks that leads to an improved user experience when watching live video while providing a constant video resolution at almost all times. We do this by solving four problems, in which the objectives are to provide the highest achievable video resolution to all single-class and multi-class users, and to maximize the number of users that experience a given video resolution. The analysis is validated by simulations that are run on publicly-available traces. We also compare the performance of our approach against other techniques for different Quality of Experience metrics. Results show that performance can be improved by at least 15% with our approach compared to state of the art.