Adaptive Video Streaming over LTE Unlicensed

In this paper we consider the problem of adaptive video streaming over an LTE-A network that utilizes Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) which is an instance of LTE Unlicensed. With LTE Unlicensed users of the LTE-A network opportunistically access radio resources from unlicensed and licensed carriers through Carrier Aggregation (CA). Our objective is to select the highest possible video quality for each LTE-A user while also try to deliver video data in time for playback, and thus avoid buffer under-run events that deteriorate viewing experience. However, the unpredictable nature of the wireless channel, as well as the unknown utilization of the unlicensed carrier by other unlicensed users, result in a challenging optimization problem. We first focus on developing an accurate system model of the adaptive streaming system, LTE-A, and the stochastic availability of unlicensed resources. Then, the formulated problem is solved in two stages: First, we calculate a proportionally fair video quality for each user, and second we execute resource allocation on a shorter time scale compatible with LTE-A. We compare our framework with the typical proportional fair scheduler as well as a state-of-the-art LTE-A adaptive video streaming framework in terms of average segment quality and number of buffer underrun events. Results show that the proposed quality selection and scheduling algorithms, not only achieve higher video segment quality in most cases, but also minimize the amount and duration of video freezes as a result of buffer under-run events.