CANE: A Cascade Control Approach for Network-Assisted Video QoE Management

Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Karthick Shankar, Maria Apostolaki, Jay Ramachandran, Steven E. Adams, Vyas Sekar, Bruno Sinopoli

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Prior efforts have shown that network-assisted schemes can improve the quality of experience (QoE) and QoE fairness when multiple video players compete for bandwidth. However, realizing network-assisted schemes in practice is challenging, as: 1) the network has limited visibility into the client players&#x2019; internal state and actions; 2) players&#x2019; actions may nullify or negate the network&#x2019;s actions; and 3) the players&#x2019; objectives might be conflicting. To address these challenges, we formulate network-assisted QoE optimization through a cascade control abstraction. This informs the design of CAscade control-based NEtwork-assisted framework (CANE), a practical network-assisted QoE framework. CANE uses machine learning (ML) techniques to approximate each player&#x2019;s behavior as a black-box model and model predictive control (MPC) to achieve a near-optimal solution. We evaluate CANE through realistic simulations and show that CANE improves multiplayer QoE fairness by <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math> </inline-formula>50% compared with pure client-side adaptive bitrate (ABR) algorithms and by <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math> </inline-formula>20% compared with uniform traffic shaping.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1-12
Number of pages12
JournalIEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology
DOIs
StateAccepted/In press - 2023

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Control and Systems Engineering
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Keywords

  • Bandwidth
  • Bit rate
  • Cascade control framework
  • Internet
  • Prediction algorithms
  • Predictive control
  • Quality of experience
  • Video on demand
  • fairness in quality of experience (QoE)
  • model predictive control (MPC)
  • multiplayer video streaming
  • network-assisted scheme
  • resource allocation

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