QoE-aware Media Streaming in Technology and Cost Heterogeneous Networks

We present a framework for studying the problem of media streaming in technology and cost heterogeneous environments. We first address the problem of efficient streaming in a technologyheterogeneous setting. We employ random linear network coding to simplify the packet selection strategies and alleviate issues such as duplicate packet reception. Then, we study the problem of media streaming from multiple cost-heterogeneous access networks. Our objective is to characterize analytically the trade-off between access cost and user experience. We model the Quality of user Experience (QoE) as the probability of interruption in playback as well as the initial waiting time. We design and characterize various control policies, and formulate the optimal control problem using a Markov Decision Process (MDP) with a probabilistic constraint. We present a characterization of the optimal policy using the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) equation. For a fluid approximation model, we provide an exact and explicit characterization of a threshold policy and prove its optimality using the HJB equation. Our simulation results show that under properly designed control policy, the existence of alternative access technology as a complement for a primary access network can significantly improve the user experience without any bandwidth over-provisioning. Index Terms Media streaming, Quality of Experience (QoE), Heterogeneous networking, Network association policy, Network coding. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA. (emails: {parandeh, asuman, medard}@mit.edu). This paper was presented in part at the 49th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control. March 16, 2012 DRAFT