Blockchain-Enabled Intelligent Video Caching and Transcoding in Clustered MEC Networks

Abstract

In recent years, the number of smart devices has exploded, leading to an unprecedented increase in demand for video live and video-on-demand (VoD) services. Also, the privacy of video providers and requesters and the security of requested video data are much more threatened. In order to solve these issues, in this paper, a blockchain-enabled CMEC video transmission model (Bl-CMEC) for intelligent video caching and transcoding will be proposed to ensure the transactions’ transparency, system security, user information privacy, and integrity of the video data, enhance the ability of severs in actively caching popular video content in the CMEC system, and realize transcoding function at network edge nodes. Furthermore, we chose a scheme based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to intelligently access the intracluster joint caching and transcoding decisions. Then, the joint video caching and transcoding decision smart contract is specially designed to automatically manage the transaction process of the joint caching and transcoding service, which records key information of joint caching and transcoding transactions and payment information on a continuous blockchain. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed Bl-CMEC framework not only can provide users with better QoE performance for video streaming service but also can ensure the security, integrity, and consistency for the video providers, video requesters, and video data.