Reinforcement Learning-Based Adaptive Streaming Scheme with Edge Computing Assistance

Sensors (Basel). 2022 Mar 10;22(6):2171. doi: 10.3390/s22062171.

Abstract

Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) is a promising scheme for improving the Quality of Experience (QoE) of users in video streaming. However, the existing schemes do not perform coordination among clients and depend on fixed heuristics. In this paper, we propose an adaptive streaming scheme with reinforcement learning in edge computing environments. The proposed scheme improves the overall QoE of clients and QoE fairness among clients based on a state-of-the-art reinforcement learning algorithm. Edge computing assistance plays a role in providing client-side observations to the mobile edge, making agents utilize this information when generating a policy for multi-client adaptive streaming. We evaluated the proposed scheme through simulation-based experiments under various network conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed scheme achieves better performance than the existing schemes.

Keywords: Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH); Quality of Experience (QoE); mobile edge computing (MEC); reinforcement learning.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Humans