QoE-Fair DASH Video Streaming Using Server-side Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

To design an optimal adaptive video streaming method, video service providers need to consider both the efficiency and the fairness of the Quality of Experience (QoE) of their users. In Reference [8], we proposed a server-side QoE-fair rate adaptation method that considers both efficiency and fairness of the QoE. The server uses Reinforcement Learning (RL) to select a bitrate for each client sharing the same bottleneck link to the server in a way that achieves fairness among concurrent DASH clients and imposes that bitrate by dynamically modifying the client’s Media Presentation Description (MPD) file. In this article, we extend that work to minimize the number of actions the server needs to take to keep the system in its equilibrium state. By incorporating a Recurrent Neural Network, specifically an LSTM model, we modify the server’s training algorithm to achieve improvements in both the quality and the quantity of actions the server takes to guide the client. Performance evaluation of the modified algorithm for clients running both homogeneous and heterogeneous adaptation algorithms showed that the number of server actions dropped by 14% and 22%, respectively, while QoE-fairness improved by at least 6% and 10%, respectively.